Especially when said person keeps making incorrect statements about Maths and ignores completely what is taught in high school.
SmartmanApps
joined 2 years ago
Unfortunately, demonstrably, a lot of people don't know what to do.
The blog post claims it is popular in academy
The blog post also completely ignores what is actually taught in high school - as found in Year 7-8 Maths textbooks - which indicates how much credibility you should attach to the blog post - none.
I read the equation and was shocked that anyone would get an answer other than 9
As a Maths teacher, I'm shocked whenever anyone ever gets an answer other than 1. I'm not sure how you came up with 9 when you previously said you've only ever seen strong juxtaposition? You can only get 9 with so-called "weak juxtaposition" (which is wrong).
I’d actually say that the weak juxtaposition is just the simple one schools use
Schools don't teach "weak juxtaposition" - they teach the actual rules of Maths! As per what's in Maths textbooks. It's adults who've forgotten the rules who make up the "weak juxtaposition" rule. See Lennes.
We do teach children how to solve this. It's not children who get it wrong - it's adults that get it wrong! Cos they've forgotten the rules of Maths (in this case The Distributive Law and Terms).
WA interprets both symbols as having equivalent meaning
The wrong meaning. It interprets them both as a fraction bar, thus giving the wrong answer.
Division doesn't mean fraction. Division is 2 terms, a fraction is 1 term. Terms are separated by operators and joined by grouping symbols. If you change the division to a fraction you change the number of terms and change the answer (and you also would've just done division before brackets, which violates the order of operations rules).
And WolframAlpha did division before brackets (turned 6/2 into a fraction, thus making it a single term instead of separate terms, all before doing brackets), thus violating the order of operations rules.
They're arguing about whether Distribution is Multiplication or not. Spoiler alert: it isn't, it's Brackets.
There's only 1 set of rules, and 2 sets of people - those who follow the rules and those who don't.
The "academic arguments" can be ignored since this is actually high school Maths - it's taught in Year 7-8.