this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
217 points (90.3% liked)

Technology

72795 readers
2991 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
217
A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months (www.engadget.com)
submitted 1 month ago by Obelix@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
175 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Nothing. And that's why people don't write equations like that: You either see

     4
6 +
***
     2

or

 6 + 4
-------
   2

If you wrote 6 + 4 / 2 in a paper you'd get reviewers complaining that it's ambiguous, if you want it to be on one line write (6+4) / 2 or 6 + (4/2) or 6 + ⁴⁄₂ or even ½(6 + 4) Working mathematicians never came up with PEMDAS, which disambiguates it without parenthesis, US teachers did. Noone else does it that way because it does not, in the slightest, aid readability.

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

And that’s why people don’t write equations like that

Says someone who clearly hasn't looked in any Maths textbooks

If you wrote 6 + 4 / 2 in a paper you’d get reviewers complaining that it’s ambiguous

Only if their Maths was very poor. #MathsIsNeverAmbiguous

Working mathematicians never came up with PEMDAS

Yes they did.

which disambiguates it without parenthesis

It was never ambiguous to begin with.

Noone else does it that way

Says someone who has never looked in a non-U.S. Maths textbooks - BIDMAS, BODMAS, BEDMAS, all textbooks have one variation or another.