I wrote a (very long) blog post about those viral math problems and am looking for feedback, especially from people who are not convinced that the problem is ambiguous.
It's about a 30min read so thank you in advance if you really take the time to read it, but I think it's worth it if you joined such discussions in the past, but I'm probably biased because I wrote it :)
Seems this whole thing is the pedestrian-math-nerd’s equivalent to the pedestrian-grammar-nerd’s arguments on the Oxford comma. At the end of the day it seems mathematical notation is just as flexible as any other facet of written human communication and the real answer is “make things as clear as possible and if there is ambiguity, further clarify what you are trying to communicate.”
Pretty much. While it's worth knowing that not everyone agrees on how implicit multiplication is prioritised, anywhere that everyone agreeing on the answer actually mattered, you wouldn't write an equation as ambiguous as this one in the first place
It's not ambiguous. People who say it is have usually forgotten The Distributive Law or Terms, or more commonly both!