Facebook Maths Equations
 

Do you guys ever see those maths equations on Facebook that have multiple choice answers? Well I did one yesterday and was surprised that so many people put different answers to what I put;

This was the equation: 5 + 5 + 5 - 5 + 5 + 5 - 5 + 5 x 0 = ?

The multiple choice answers were 40, 0, 20, 15.

The current results

What answer would you put???

20

Oh no 0 f/

Surely the answer is 0? :shrug:

potato

lol, yeah it is. Maths was never my strong point :laugh:

102,252 people are wrong then :suspect:

It just baffled me because :laugh: Is there 'no right answer' or are people just clicking too fast and not realising?

No, the answer is 0, I would have got it wrong because I would have clicked too fast

doesn't there need to be brackets in there somewhere? Otherwise how do you know what is getting times by the zero?

the answer is 20

Fruity's right. And if you put it into Google, it automatically brackets 5 * 0 :suspect: Which then equals 15.

True, but they didn't provide the brackets :shrug:

I assume that because there is no brackets then you're multiplying the zero by the answer you have by the time you reach the zero?

That's my logic. If there are no brackets there then anything * 0 = 0

Anything times 0 is 0. I think people probably get it wrong because they click too fast/don't read it properly, I always look at the end of the sum before I start! :)

40 :idc:

I clicked 20 but, looking back over it, I think it is 15.

Because of BODMAS, you do 5 x 0 first which is 0. Then add all of the other 5s together, then take away the rest of the fives. I just added the rest of the fives up wrong.

lol.....it's still 0

The answer is 15. By order of operations, multiplication takes precedence over addition, even if there are no brackets the multiplication still takes priority here. If the multiplication was for the whole sum the rest of it would have to be enclosed in brackets.

So your answer is 15.

Ben is correct, it's 15.

Oh Dear, my Maths obviously has not improved since school then :laugh:

Because of the lack of brackets you start at the left and work through the sum.

That means the ongoing sum at the end would be multiplied by 0 which makes the total 0

Nope, you start with the multiplication first. So you do the 5 x 0 then do the rest of the sum.

If it were all to be multiplied by zero it would have to look like this

(5 + 5 + 5 - 5 + 5 + 5 - 5 + 5) x 0

That's what I would have thought but I don't have much confidence in my Maths skills

It's zero.

:worship:

I failed geometry in high school, and even i got this :idc:

Ben's reasoning makes sense.

Would also explain why Google assumed that 5*0 would be bracketed.

I would love to claim it's my reasoning, but it's the the order of operations. I learnt it when I was younger.

There's a bit about it on here (yes, I know it's wiki, but I cba searching the net for a better source):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations

Ah BODMAS how could I forget

I would answer 40 for that :shrug:

WTF is BODMAS?

Nicole is studying Maths at Uni if she says it's 0 then it's 0 :nono:

How on Earth did she answer this wrong then? The answer is 15.

Never even heard of BODMAS, and it just looks confusing :bored:

My nephew was doing his homework the other day too and was trying to explain to me that everything has to get rounded up to 100 now before you do sums or something like that.... pfft scrap that, just bloody add up what you see and thats that :shrug:

The answer is 15. Seriously people on here cannot do maths.

You always go a times/divide first and the add and subtract after unless there is brackets.

fp at people

How did you get 40?

I am cringing at everyone who got this wrong. It is such basic maths, no wonder they want to up the school leaving age to 18 and make maths A-Level compulsory.

I'd say people still at school are most likely to get this right, I pretty much forgot most things about Maths when I dropped it

It's been a long time since I was at school Charlie, you tend to forget those type of rules unless you're a Maths teacher :laugh: