My thought process: if I had 8÷(4+4) = 1 and factored out a 2, I get 8÷2(2+2) = 1. However, if I say 2(2+2) = 2*(2+2), then 8÷2(2+2) = 8÷2*(2+2) = 1, BUT 8÷2*(2+2) = 16.
Please help I’m feeling dumber by the second
In: Mathematics
It equals 1 because you chose to follow a criteria that gives you 1. If you decided and we all adopted the idea that we’d do the operations from left to right, treating the division symbol as applying to the numbers immediately next to it then it wouldn’t equal 1. But the same way as you can read this text in English because we chose to use these sequence of letters and words as English, we chose the language where the equation equals 1.
Latest Answers