math: that's where i'm a viking
https://mashable.com/article/math-equation-divides-twitter/ (cw: brain-hurting juice)
my hot take:
people who can't tell the difference between an objective reality and a cultural convention, and would never have it dawn on them that there could be a difference between them, are exactly why we can't have nice things and they should all be fed to large jungle cats so i never have to read an argument like this ever again 🐯
fwiw, i think "multiplication implied by parentheses takes precedence over the usual PEMDAC/left-to-right order of operations" is the superior convention, for its flexibility and consistency with algebraic tradition, but i'm not daft enough to think it's objectively right somehow
re: math: that's where i'm a viking
@zebratron2084 *looks at the equation*
...this is a badly written equation.
I mean, I agree with you - the way I think of it, there are two lumps with a division sign between them, and you calculate the value of each lump before carrying out the division - but this equation doesn't look like the equations I'm used to seeing and I'd discourage people from writing it this way.
re: math: that's where i'm a viking
@packbat I mean, *yeah*. :) Totally agreed, and that's one of the things that annoys me about all this, the artificiality and impracticality of this equation. It really rubs me wrong that people are looking at something that defies all convention and arguing in terms of what's "right" or "wrong" for it rather than thinking about what conventions went into it—or failed to—in the first place. I'm a LONG since fallen math jock, but I used to be one many decades ago, and I'd never use notation like that.
Well, not never. The only circumstance I can think of where it might actually be natural or useful is a low-level algebra class where the equation starts life as something like a ÷ b(c+d) and you substitute terms one at a time. But then I'd STILL use a horizontal bar to denote division if at all possible, e.g.
8
-----------
2 (2+2)
The whole thing feels like creates an "ambiguity" that only exists because of bad, unrealistic notation—a problem that's been solved ages ago, really.
grammar metaphor re: math: that's where i'm a viking
@zebratron2084 *nods*
under normal circumstances, someone would be like "?" and whoever it is that wrote down the equation in the first place would rewrite it to stop being ambiguous
or the reader would check the next equation to see if it assumed an answer of 1 or 16