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 :)
It's not ambiguous at all. By the definition of Terms - ab=(axb) - a/bc is 2 terms and a/bxc is 3 terms. If we were to write it in fraction form (to illustrate the difference), in the former c is in the denominator, but in the latter it's in the numerator, hence a different answer. dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110846452267056791
It applies to operators, or more precisely division. When doing the divisions, you have to do them left-to-right, but other than that each of the operators can be done in any order. i.e. it doesn't matter what order you do the multiplications in, as long as you do them before the additions and subtractions. Unfortunately I've seen many people misremember left-to-right as an overarching rule, rather than only applying to division.