yo man i keep clicking but its not giving me my free ipad 2 :mad:

I'm not suggesting that the order of operations didn't exist 30 years ago. As new engineers we were all made aware of it. What I am saying is that it wasn't accepted in engineering school. Many trigonometric solutions were pages of calculations. We were required to do these without computers, which weren't available or hand held calculators. The precise nature of the work I chose doesn't allow for potentials. Only absolutes.

The fact that the basic laws of mathematics exist doesn't mean they are relevant today. I would wager,that of everyone that posted in this thread there might be one or two who even know what the sine of an angle is. Calculating seconds of a degree was a process that would take time. Today,with 3 mouse clicks we can measure angles.

You can tell the ones who sat at the back of the class in high school who answered 1 on this question. God damn slackers. :warning

I took some engineering courses a few years back, that trig shit was hard even with help from scientific calculators, can't imagine doing that free hand...

and you still got the answer wrong

Thats what I was trying to say. While we can understand people not getting that one right we can not understand people getting this one wrong. At least people over the age of 11.

my son takes offense to that statement! :mad:

7 pages? WTF?

Want a beer? :drinkup

So why are you being so stubborn on this? This isn't an advanced Trig question. This is a middle school level equation. You wouldn't see this in any university level course. It's fundamental math.

Of course the order of operations is still relevant today. If it weren't, how would you know that the brackets come first? How would you know you have to calculate exponents first? Are you suggesting that exponents must also be wrapped in brackets or we couldn't know if they're to be calculated first or not?

As an Engineer it really makes sense to you that at some point somebody decided to make the rules of math MORE complicated by requiring brackets where they haven't been needed for hundreds of years? Should we expect that soon you'll need to write 3^3 in an equation as (3*3*3) so as not to be ambigious when it's well understood already what it means?

You're really maintaining that MOST of the rules of of the order of operations still apply (brackets, exponents, left to right) but somewhere along the line multiplication and division before addition and substraction was dropped from it? Despite all the evidence to the contrary that's already been posted?

I really never would have pegged you as being this stubborn or as somebody that would be trolling in threads but clearly one of those two must be the case here.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

order of operations wasn't accepted in engineering school? :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

id hate to think of how many failed buildings happened because of this fantasy engineering school where order of operations isn't accepted. is 1+1 still 2 there? or is that not accepted? :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

just because you did that three clicks it doesnt mean that the computer did magic, those basic laws of mathematics still exist today and the computer uses them to process calculations

funny how you are insulting everyone in this thread but you yourself dont know the answer to a simple grade 6 math problem

Sadmep??

Seriously why are people still getting this shit wrong?!?!

Not true.
I provided the three possible solutions to an improperly designed question.

i believe the whole point of this thread is the 'solution' not 'three possible solutions'

How can you be arrogant? There's only one possible solution.

Here's page after page of results from University websites that show you exactly how to do the equation. When following the rules, there's nothing ambigious about it, period.

https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-...w=1688&bih=759

Go ahead, let us know where you got your Engineering degree. Should be pretty simple to find their math department's order of operations online. We'll follow it and see if we end up with more than one possible solution.

How much engineering work have you done? Can you point out clients you successfully designed and engineered products for?

By the sound of your background you should send us a resume. We are always looking for bright young minds. We pay very well and have a solid benefit package with retirement benefits.

If it appears I am being arrogant about a simple math problem it would be because I have done this, in the real world my entire career. Literally I have worked with hundreds of engineers with many fortune 500 companies. So, what you see as arrogance is only life experience. If you go to Martin Marietta for a job and answer the question posed any other way than the way I answered it,you will not get the job. I worked for them right out of school as a data tech and I know that in those years that equation would be considered sloppy and ambiguous. If things have changed in other fields requiring math in 2011 I wouldn't know.

Can you explain the rules that determine when one must follow OOO and when one must not? And is there a reference for that? I can't find one.

You're being arrogant because you're insisting that you being an Engineer trumps every other source on Mathematics. It's silly on the face. You've been told, and shown over and over again that the Order of Operations has not changed, it demands that in the absence of brackets multiplication and division be done before addition and substraction

So if your argument is going to hinge entirely on you being an Engineer, and having a degree in Engineering, then by all means please tell us where you got this degree from. We can then see exactly how that school, the one that issued your degree, sees things. Shouldn't that be the absolute authority in your mind?

Man up!
 

allow me to once again pull from the past....

:thumbsup

i took a nice little faceplant in a PHP thread recently. and though i know where my mistake came from, i had to eat crow first. got clowned on for 5-6 pages.:1orglaugh but i lived to fight another day and enjoy this thread!

Or explain in the absence of OOO, how do we know we must do brackets first? What rule specifies that?

we should call the university of Minnesota and find out if THEY can get this right

No need to call them. They've been nice enough to post online the information for any student who might need a refresher.

http://r.umn.edu/academics/advising/...of-operations/

So the Univeristy of Minnesota is wrong because it's a school not an Engineer. I wonder if other universities are also wrong?

no engineering work but i dont need to be an engineer to know the answer to a simple math problem

it is a straightforward question, BEDMAS means multiplication before addition and subtraction

that is all there is to it.

if someone gave you that question and your answer was anything but 41, you would be wrong. period. wrong.

2 + 4 x 3 = 14

you can't write it as (2+4) x 3 = 18 because then it would be the wrong answer

put it this way, if it were a + bc would you rewrite it as (a+b)c? of course not

i'm on your side.
Simple math rules.
Minte, lets see the answer to this one 2+4x4=???

Oh yeah Minte, i will never work for you and i have done engineering for fortune 500 companies to. ( still do )

well lets see

which solution were you looking for? solution 1..? solution 2.. ?

You have seen equations in industry written like that?

If you presented work that was written that way,you are right. You would never work for me.

Don't have a stroke. It's not worth getting so worked up over. I am NOT being arrogant.
If I want to be arrogant,there are plenty of other things that I can be arrogant about. Taking a posture on a math gag I learned in the beginning of my career isn't even on the list.

Madison is in Wisconsin. I went to school at the UW-Madison.

Team_Sakura says 41

wrong answer :thumbsup

I have seen a lot. Just because i haven't seen it doesn't mean other rules start to apply.

I'm not in need for work, btw, you couldnt afford me ;)

Holy Fuck! I get 666! You've polluted our minds and now we are all controlled by the devil over this thread. What kind of trickery is this?

So is that a no?

I'm not snarking, I honestly want to understand all this.

I just find it fascinating in your case. See Franck and Divy and those types not knowing the answer isn't surprising. They don't present as well educated, intelligent and successful.

Anyways, directly from the University of Wisconsin website:

the answer is 41

In the perfect world, the equation itself should be written like this: 40 X 0 + 40 + 1 =

But it isn't :1orglaughmwauhahahahaha

Countdown has a lot to answer for. Carol & her inserting brackets when none are needed...

Besides what Warchild posted a few posts above, you're really expecting someone to write a + bc as a + (bc)?

The brackets should be used to help readability of more complex equations but not when it's as dead simple as above. The quote that Warchild posted from the university website sums it up well.

So say that a + bc is ambiguous is nonsensical.

Order of operations. Parentheses are used to indicate the order of doing the operations: in
evaluating an expression with parentheses the innermost matching pairs are evaluated rst as in
((1 + 2)2 + 5)2 = (32 + 5)2 = (9 + 5)2 = 142 = 196:

Thanks for making my point. Dinner was excellent this evening.