The internet is full of puzzles that have confused a lot of people and sparked debates about the correct answers. Similar to the famous blue and black dress that puzzled social media and experts alike, there’s also a viral math problem that has had workplaces and scientists scratching their heads.
In a tweet from 2019, a user shared a math problem that sparked a huge debate online. The problem was 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2), and it got people talking not just on Twitter but all over social media.
Editors at Popular Mechanics, a lifestyle magazine, found themselves stuck because they couldn’t agree on a famous math puzzle. They took their discussion to the official chatbox at work, where they argued and tried to figure out what the correct answer really was.
One of the editors mentioned that in elementary and high school, students learned a helpful method called “PEMDAS.” This stands for “Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction.” When solving math problems, you should follow the order of operations represented by this acronym. First, you tackle anything in parentheses, then move on to exponents, and continue in that order from left to right.
To start, you need to solve the 2 + 2 inside the parentheses first, which equals 4. This leaves you with 8 ÷ 2 x 4. Next, according to Mashup Math, you should do the leftmost operation first. So, you need to solve 8 ÷ 2 before doing 2 x 4, even though multiplication usually comes before division.
The quotient would result in 4, which gives us 4 x 4, with a product of 16. However, half of the people online tend to disagree with this operation – including scientists who know their math.
