adamshive
Plastic
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2010
- Location
- Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, USA
You may have seen this equation on social network sites. It's basically going "viral". What's funny is that machinists view these things differently so I figured I'd check out what you guys think. Using the traditional order of operations the answer is 7. But! And there is a but- the problem boils down to this:
6-0+1
Which I instantly think is 5. This is where I view this like a machinist because zero is "nothing" in code so I continue to the next digit. It's funny that hundreds of thousands of people disagree on the answer. A lot of people just add straight across and get 1.
When I checked an engineering forum they were all insisting 7 until I basically pointed out that to me the zero means "nothing/do nothing/do not pass go etc" which perked their ears up and they actually said I could be on to something.
Then I asked an acquaintance at Harvard who immediately said 7 then said something about axioms and stuff I didn't understand and eventually said that he'd accept my answer of 5 with an explanation of looking at the problem "in it's entirety" as opposed to left to right or something like that.
What do you think?
6-0+1
Which I instantly think is 5. This is where I view this like a machinist because zero is "nothing" in code so I continue to the next digit. It's funny that hundreds of thousands of people disagree on the answer. A lot of people just add straight across and get 1.
When I checked an engineering forum they were all insisting 7 until I basically pointed out that to me the zero means "nothing/do nothing/do not pass go etc" which perked their ears up and they actually said I could be on to something.
Then I asked an acquaintance at Harvard who immediately said 7 then said something about axioms and stuff I didn't understand and eventually said that he'd accept my answer of 5 with an explanation of looking at the problem "in it's entirety" as opposed to left to right or something like that.
What do you think?
