https://zeta.one/viral-math/

I wrote a (very long) blog post about those viral math problems and am looking for feedback, especially from people who are not convinced that the problem is ambiguous.

It’s about a 30min read so thank you in advance if you really take the time to read it, but I think it’s worth it if you joined such discussions in the past, but I’m probably biased because I wrote it :)

  • @[email protected]
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    8610 months ago

    If you are so sure that you are right and already “know it all”, why bother and even read this? There is no comment section to argue.

    I beg to differ. You utter fool! You created a comment section yourself on lemmy and you are clearly wrong about everything!

    You take the mean of 1 and 9 which is 4.5!

    /j

    • @[email protected]OP
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      3410 months ago

      🤣 I wasn’t even sure if I should post it on lemmy. I mainly wrote it so I can post it under other peoples posts that actually are intended to artificially create drama to hopefully show enough people what the actual problems are with those puzzles.

      But I probably am a fool and this is not going anywhere because most people won’t read a 30min article about those math problems :-)

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        Actually the correct answer is clearly 0.2609 if you follow the order of operations correctly:

        6/2(1+2)
        = 6/23
        = 0.26

        • @MrVilliam
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          10 months ago

          Nah man, distribute the 2.
          6/2(1+2)
          = 6/2+4
          = 3+4
          = 7

          This is like 4st grayed maff.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          510 months ago

          🤣 I’m not sure if you read the post but I also wrote about that (the paragraph right before “What about the real world?”)

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            I did read the post (well done btw), but I guess I must have missed that. And here I thought I was a comedic genius

    • @SpaceNoodle
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      1110 months ago

      Right, because 5 rounds down to 4.5

      • @[email protected]OP
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        510 months ago

        @Prunebutt meant 4.5! and not 4.5. Because it’s not an integer we have to use the gamma function, the extension of the factorial function to get the actual mean between 1 and 9 => 4.5! = 52.3428 which looks about right 🤣

            • pitninja
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              410 months ago

              I think you got hit hard by Poe’s Law here. Except it’s more like people couldn’t tell if you were jokingly or genuinely getting your math wrong… Even after you explained you were joking lol

                • Redjard
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                  110 months ago

                  If one doesn’t realize you’re op, the entire thing can be interpreted very differently.
                  Then “Not sure if sarcastic and woosh, or adding to the joke ಠ_ಠ” could be interpreted as something like “I’m not sure if you are adding to the joke and I’m not understanding it”.

            • @Sidhean
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              310 months ago

              Stop it Patrick, you’re scaring them!