Hawanja

joined 2 years ago
[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

People are stupid, any system that fails to take that into account and mitigate it is doomed to frustration and failure…

I hope you're not implying that arithmetic has somehow "failed" the human race or something.

it does because people read (and therefore do math) left to right.

No, it only makes more sense this way to YOU, yourself, personally. To everyone else who knows the order of operations it makes perfect sense either way. You're projecting your own limitations on everybody else. Other people have learned the proper way to do equations.

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Those sentence are also perfectly understandable, once you’ve understood the order of the words, but they’re written in such away that you have to think about it.

No, they aren't. Read the way they're written, as in left to right, none of those sentances make sense. They do not make sense because they disobey the rules of grammar.

But the math equation 2+5(8-5)=17 makes perfect sense. Writing it like (8+5)5+2 =17 also makes perfect sense, but writing it this way does not somehow enable it to make "more" sense than the first way. It does not, because both of those equations are the exact same thing. It's called "the law of equivalence," i.e. 2+5=5+2. It's just two ways of writing the exact same thing. You cannot do this with grammar. "The Horse eats the grass" =/= "The grass eats the Horse." You cannot just rearrange the words in a sentance and get the same meaning the same way you can rearrange the elements in an equation.

It's not "less effort" to read it one way or the other, because both of those equations are exactly the same. It only makes "more" sense to YOU, yourself, personally. But to everyone else who learned the order of operations it makes no difference which way it's written.

It’s obviously not just myself as posting out of order math problems are a constant source of online engagement.

Like I said in the begining, people are fucking stupid.

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

But you didn't "Fix" the equation, because it wasn't "broken." You just rearranged it so that it made more sense to you, yourself, personally. It already made sense to other people who've learned the proper order of operations. Your metaphor fails here because unlike the signs you posted above, this equation is perfectly understandable in either form.

I'm sorry my friend, math is not "mean." You cannot use math to oppress people.

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Well, it's causing YOU confusion yes. But to anyone who remembers the order of operation it's not confusing at all.

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

But how do you know they did that? Becuase it's perfectly legit the way it's written.

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (15 children)

I just fail to see how you come to the conclusion that it was written in a "mean" way. It's math, there is no "nice" way to write an equation.

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (17 children)

You got it wrong on your first try, didn't you? Lol, it's not "mean" to write a math problem. The whole point of memorizing the order of operations is so that you can solve it no matter what order the equation is written in. No one wrote this problem on purpose just to make you fail to understand it, that's dumb.

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (20 children)

It's written the same way literally thousands of math problems in thousands of textbooks have written the same type of math problem for the last 100 years. OP did not write it that way to be "mean." He wrote it that way because it's a legit way to write it.

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago (25 children)

What's hard about it is people are fucking stupid.