[Marc]

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

Spoiler:

40 - 2,392 people
0 - 82,075 people
20 - 15,293 people
15 - 84,567 people

What answer would you put???

[Niamh.]

20

[Niamh.]

Oh no 0 f/

[Marc]

Surely the answer is 0?

[Fetch The Bolt Cutters]

potato

[Niamh.]

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

[Marc]

102,252 people are wrong then

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

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Marc

102,252 people are wrong then

It just baffled me because 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

[fruit_cake]

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

[Fetch The Bolt Cutters]

the answer is 20

[Samuel.]

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

[Marc]

True, but they didn't provide the brackets

[Niamh.]

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?

[Z]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

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

[Kate!]

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!

[Novo]

40

[Boothy]

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.

[Kate!]

Originally Posted by Boothy

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

[Benjamin]

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.

[Roy Mars III]

Ben is correct, it's 15.

[Niamh.]

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

[Shasown]

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

[Benjamin]

Originally Posted by Shasown

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

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Shasown

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

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

[nicole_burks]

It's zero.