Facebook math problem: Why PEMDAS doesn’t always give a clear answer. - Slate Magazine
Perhaps you’ve seen the problem on Facebook or another forum:
6 ÷ 2(1+2) = ?
It’s one of several similar math problems popping up on social networks recently. Perhaps you, too, thought, “Duh! That’s easy,” and then, as I did, became embroiled in an epically long comment thread while your blood pressure steadily rose because you could not possibly understand why the others doing this problem could not get the right answer.
Perhaps, if you’re a nerd like me, or you teach math as I do, you even fell asleep thinking about this problem, baffled and frustrated about why you were unable to convince intelligent, educated friends that your calculation of this deceptively simple [...]
"'To my mind,' says Grabiner, 'the major deficit in U.S. math education is that people think math is about calculation and formulas and getting the one right answer, rather than being about exciting ideas that cut across all sorts of intellectual categories, clear and logical thinking, the power of abstraction and a language that lets you solve problems you’ve never seen before.' Even if that language, like any other, can be a bit ambiguous sometimes."
[Emphases mine - P.J.]
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