Reply To: Elementary Mathematical Equation

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Yserbius123
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These questions are all kind of silly, because the way it was written is ambiguous. It’s like if I asked you “I met to friends, Chaim, and Shmiel, and he gave an apple to him. Who gave who an apple?” In academic and science writing, the author would make sure to either surround everything with multiple sets of parenthesis, or split it into smaller equations so that there’s only one way to read it.

There is a way of writing math problems called “Polish Notation” where you put the operand at the beginning of the problem. It’s how computer code works behind the scenes actually. It has the advantage of not being ambiguous when it comes to writing it out. So “2 + 2” becomes “+ 2 2” and “(6 – 4) x 3” becomes “x – 6 4 3”.

Using Polish Notation, this problem can be either “÷ x + 8 2 2 2” or “÷ 8 x 2 + 2 2”
8÷2(2+2)