2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2-2+2 x 0?

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This topic has 482 replies, 114 voices, and was last updated 12 years ago by oldnpastit.

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2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2-2+2 x 0?
funkynick
Full Member

What’s infinity times zero then?

That’ll be undefined…

Infinities are buggers like that…

Posted 12 years ago

Elfinsafety
Free Member

What a packet of nonsense. You could just as easily say it’s 24:

(2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2)+((2+2)x0))

Or any other number of combinations.

There’s no brackets in the original sum. Therefore it is zero, if it is to be interpreted as it is writed. You can’t just add brackets in to try to look clever you know.

Posted 12 years ago

scaredypants
Full Member

flap_jack – Member
scardypants – your 11 yr old is right (in octal)

Gawd, you must win a prize for that flap_jack 😳

Posted 12 years ago

GrahamS
Full Member

Yeah Elf, except there are set rules, taught at GCSE level maths, that define exactly how it should be read.

And they say it is 26.

You can’t just add brackets in to try to look clever you know.

I didn’t – they are just to illustrate who to read it in the correct BODMAS/PEMDAS order.

Posted 12 years ago

Elfinsafety
Free Member

Some of you lot wooduv bin beaten up on a daily basis if you’d gone my school.

I hope you actually were. You deserved it.

Posted 12 years ago

flap_jack
Free Member

what, as saddest software eng on singletrack. A crowded field, I always thought..

Posted 12 years ago

trickydisco
Free Member

Ask google

Posted 12 years ago

Elfinsafety
Free Member

I din’t see that minus sign. does not in any way change owt.

Can’t just throw random brackets about to arrive at the number you want. It’s bollocks.

Posted 12 years ago

jonba
Free Member

I’m amazed that there are no pedants who’ve decided to work out the error and quote the answer +/-

Posted 12 years ago

GrahamS
Full Member

Elf: what is 2 + 3 x 5 – 4?

Posted 12 years ago

Cougar
Full Member

I din’t see that minus sign. does not in any way change owt.

Can’t just throw random brackets about to arrive at the number you want. It’s bollocks.

Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Some of you lot wooduv bin beaten up on a daily basis if you’d gone my school.

I hope you actually were. You deserved it.

I was. Thanks.

Posted 12 years ago

Elfinsafety
Free Member

Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Yes it does.

I was. Thanks.

Good.

Posted 12 years ago

Stoatsbrother
Free Member

One question here which interests me is how people would answer the question if it were read out to them verbally. Is BODMAS (I don’t think we had parentheses in my youth) a strictly written convention?

Posted 12 years ago

GrahamS
Full Member

> Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Yes it does.

I thought only TJ was infallible 😀

Posted 12 years ago

Elfinsafety
Free Member

Elf: what is 2 + 3 x 5 – 4?

5

17

21

Take yer pick.

Posted 12 years ago

IanMunro
Free Member

Elf earlier 😀
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K71MckOTt1M[/video]

Posted 12 years ago

ianpinder
Free Member

lol

Posted 12 years ago

Flaperon
Full Member

Elfinsafety – you unwittingly (though funnily enough that’s a very appropriate word to describe you) have managed to hit the nail on the head when it comes to the dismal state of this country’s more advanced scientific and engineering professions.

ome of you lot wooduv bin beaten up on a daily basis if you’d gone my school. I hope you actually were. You deserved it.

This is not difficult stuff. I learned it in primary school, and frankly it beggars belief that you don’t know it. More so when you consider your response when someone quite reasonably points out that you’re understanding is wrong.

Being unable to do basic maths is not something to be proud of, yet it’s all too common in the UK. “Oooh, don’t make it add it up; I don’t do maths, me.” You wouldn’t say, “Don’t ask me to do that, I can’t read” so why is this any difference.

YOU (and your ilk) are the reason engineering is seen as derogatory these days, and are probably responsible at a base level for the fact that we are never going to leave recession without a paradigm shift in the industrial output of this country.

Posted 12 years ago

GrahamS
Full Member

Interesting question Stoatsbrother.

I would assume that the person reading it to me was reading it in the order they expected the operations to be performed, so this question could be correctly read as:

Two times zero,
plus two, plus two, plus two, plus two, plus two, plus two, plus two,
plus two, plus two, plus two, plus two, plus two, plus two, plus two,
minus two equals?

Posted 12 years ago

Elfinsafety
Free Member

😆

Youse lot are just a bunch of nerds.

(Gives GrahamS a Chinese Burn. Pulls plug out of BBC Micro after Graham’s spent several hours typing code into it and was just about to run it. Storms off.)

Posted 12 years ago

donsimon
Free Member

Surely you couldn’t do anything until the whole question was read, then apply the rules.

Posted 12 years ago

allthepies
Free Member

some of you lot wooduv bin beaten up on a daily basis if you’d gone my school

The independent school ? Hope the fees weren’t too high 😯

Posted 12 years ago

Elfinsafety
Free Member

YOU (and your ilk) are the reason engineering is seen as derogatory these days, and are probably responsible at a base level for the fact that we are never going to leave recession without a paradigm shift in the industrial output of this country.

😆

No mate; it’s the Chinese churning stuff out for cheaper what will put paid to British Industry, not me.

You’re quite angry about this, aren’t you?

(Goes off to hang out with the cool kids, talk to girls and smoke cigs)

Posted 12 years ago

GrahamS
Full Member

(Gives GrahamS a Chinese Burn. Pulls plug out of BBC Micro after Graham’s spent several hours typing code into it and was just about to run it. Storms off.)

Hah! Backed it up to my 5¼” floppy. Too slow thick kid.

*ooow me arm*

Posted 12 years ago

brakes
Free Member

the Bible that is Excel says 26
.
BUT at the end of the day, where is this useful outside of primary school maths?

Posted 12 years ago

Ambrose
Full Member

Oh no- somebody said ‘paradigm shift’ we must make some facetime to touch base. Ciao

Posted 12 years ago

Elfinsafety
Free Member

Just done it on my calculator and the answer is, unsurprisingly, zero.

Tum tee tum tee tum…. 🙂

Hah! Backed it up to my 5¼” floppy

😯

Disgusting pervert. Always knew there was something wrong with your sort. No wonder the girls woon’t talk to youse….

Posted 12 years ago

molgrips
Free Member

Calculators don’t work the same way as paper maths should do, Elf.

Posted 12 years ago

Elfinsafety
Free Member

What, you mean calculators actually work properly? 😀

Youse lot carry on with yer silliness. I’ll trust the calculator.

I woon’t trust youse lot to build me a house or something probbly fall down cos you’ve made stuff up rather than doing it properly. 😐

Posted 12 years ago

jon1973
Free Member

Just done it on my calculator and the answer is, unsurprisingly, zero.

that’s not the answer I got

Posted 12 years ago

jon1973
Free Member

Posted 12 years ago

glenh
Free Member

I’m a physicist and I say the answer is ambiguous. Bodmas is just convention, nothing to do with mathematics.
Engineers are just inflexible 😉
Proper notation would include parentheses.

Posted 12 years ago

mattsccm
Free Member

By inserting brackets you change the meaning of the Q. There are none shown in the original therefore you do it one step at a time.
Anything time zero is O

Posted 12 years ago

mattsccm
Free Member

Bugger just found another answer who said the same thing.

Posted 12 years ago

float
Free Member

ran it through matlab (mathematical computer program). its 26.

Posted 12 years ago

GrahamS
Full Member

> Elf: what is 2 + 3 x 5 – 4?
5
17
21
Take yer pick.

What I like best about that response is they are all wrong.

It’s 13.

Posted 12 years ago

wwaswas
Full Member

I think the space around the x in thread title misleads. Makes it look like the assign is one sum to be then
Multiplied by the 0.

Posted 12 years ago

nicko74
Full Member

I’ve reached the dizzy heights of 46 years old without ever knowing that pedmas thing.

It’s probably for the best, as they put you on a register for it.

Posted 12 years ago

Cougar
Full Member

Just done it on my calculator and the answer is, unsurprisingly, zero.

Non-scientific calculators will evaluate the sum as entered and get zero. Any scientific calculator will do it sensibly and give 26.

Posted 12 years ago

sadmadalan
Full Member

Of course you could write as

14 * 2 – 2 + 2 * 0

But I suspect that people would still want to do sequential sums rather than following the conventions

of course the sum above could also be re-written as

2 * 0 – 2 + 14 * 2

to help those that are suffering!

But I suspect that I am digressing!

Posted 12 years ago