this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by wischi@programming.dev to c/memes@lemmy.ml
 

https://zeta.one/viral-math/

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 :)

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[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 year ago (12 children)

What's especially wild to me is that even the position of "it's ambiguous" gets almost as much pushback as trying to argue that one of them is universally correct.

Last time this came up it was my position that it was ambiguous and needed clarification and had someone accuse me of taking a prescriptive stance and imposing rules contrary to how things were actually being done. How asking a person what they mean or seeking clarification could possibly be prescriptive is beyond me.

Bonus points, the guy telling me I was being prescriptive was arguing vehemently that implicit multiplication having precedence was correct and to do otherwise was wrong, full stop.

[–] Socsa@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Without any additional parentheses, the division sign is assumed to separate numerators and denominators within a complete expression, in which case you would reduce each separately. It's very, very marginally ambiguous at best.

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 1 points 11 months ago

You are correct with your definition - Terms are separated by operators and joined by grouping symbols - and it's consequently not ambiguous at all (using so-called "weak juxtaposition" breaks that rule).

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