The distributive property is essentially multiplication. It has the same priority as multiplication or division in the order of operations. You can't distribute until you've done multiplication or division from left to right.
This is a weird thread, messed up thread that just seems totally illogical to me. IMO this sort of problem messes with people who are used to seeing a(???) as multiplication and worked out first. Which generally appears in high level math classes, as a(b+c) type structure just about always gets precedent. Mainly because no one use the the old "÷" symbol anymore and instead use the much clearer / symbol(especially when used as a horizontal bar rather than a slanted one). So with that in mind, people who got 2 should easily see the pitfall and understand the mistake. So the long debate is simply incredibly WTF!? On a side note, I think the elementary school me would get this problem correctly easily, when properly instructed the implicit multiplication between 2 and the parenthesis. While the current me, armed with differential equations/discrete match knowledge from college, quickly got the wrong answer. The OP was kind of neat, but the responses... not so much.
Hilarious how people come up with new ways to prove they're wrong and then post "/thread" thinking they're geniuses. :grin:
Like I said in my first post in the thread, this isn't really a math problem. That's why consulting theoretical physicists or advanced mathematicians on this is beside the point. This is a "what's the correct way to parse this expression?" question. Programmers or people that implement programming languages (i.e. interpreter/compiler writers) should be the "expert" sources, not people trained to solve differential equations. I don't know of a single programming language where "48/2*(9+3)" would be evaluated as 2. And those arguing that there is a difference between * and implicit multiplication -- where's that from? They're just making up a rule that doesn't need to exist.
Really? Really? This finally got buried to the second page and somebody had to bring it back. Why? Really? Why?
I'm a Math major. I'm sticking with 288. Juxtaposition of multiplication (which is essentially what is being argued, whether the (9+3) is in the numerator or denominator) is something which has been debated for ages and still is debated (clearly). It was something which was mentioned in some 15th century texts and not been accepted as a law (which is why I am sticking with 288).
