I think you're trolling, but as a maths student I despair to see people making such basic errors so I'll bite anyway.

You multiply before you add. The lack of brackets is irrelevant. Brackets just mean that you deal with what's inside the brackets separately. They're not necessary here. You always multiply before you add, add before you subtract and so 31 is correct.

2 + 2 + 2 x 0 is 4, not 0

Or try it on a spreadsheet which will tell you the answer is 31. For the answer to be 40 surely it would have to be written (3+7) x 4

Oh I give up. No wonder so many are leaving the teaching profession when met with such an attitude.

Tarrah

Sorry Alta Ego Cat, that was aimed at our friend Floopy (and I was only trying to help )

I stand by my belief that

1) A number multiplied by zero can never be zero. Totally impossible. 10 x 0 can never be 0. It's 10.

2) Any maths sum with brackets added such as 1 + ( 9 x 2) gives an impossible result.

1 + 9 + 2 is 12. 1 plus the 9 = 10 and you add the 2 to make 12. But 1 + (9 x 2) is 19!

9 x 2 is 18 and you add the 1 = 19

By adding a bracket you come up with a nonsense number that contradicts the basic rules of maths. Amazing! :P And people wonder why maths is hard to understand!

It's impossible to alter the 12 result to make 19 by adding a bracket. This is wacky logic.

Your calculator is doing the sums in the order that you enter the numbers.

When you enter it in the calculator you are inferring:

(3+7) x 4

In real life

3 + 7 x 4 = 7 x 4 + 3

ie the answer is order independent

Maybe this will help http://www.mathsisfun.com/operation-order-bodmas.html

With respect, BODMAS is illogical.

Let's use the most basic numbers. A 1 and a 2 digit.

1 + 1 x 2 is

4.

Now using the BODMAS system

1 + (1 x 2) is

3.

Can't you see how that is impossible. How can you have one of the numbers disappearing! LOL What happened to 4? It's vanished and become a 3.

This is ludicrous. It doesn't make sense. I can't believe people accepted this dumb logic. If this is the basics of our maths system then it's absurd.

Well, as mentioned, Winterfire never mentioned any brackets. He wasn't using the BODMAS system. He typed

"In another thread in another forum here I asked whether people could calculate

3 + 7 x 4"

--------------------------------------------------------------

so I'm taking the numbers in a logical left to right fashion which is the way we read sentences in the English language (left to right). 3 followed by a 7 followed by a 4. And that makes 40, not 31!

I don't care if the late Albert Einstein said it's 31, he is wrong. It's 40. Surely this is basic logic!

Just to add one last thing... none of you clever maths people have explained how a number multiplied by zero equals zero.

If I had four bags of crisps on a table and multiplied them by zero crisps, wouldn't the four packets still remain on the table. I thought zero crisps meant no crisps on the table! 4 x NOTHING must equal 4.

But according to the rules of maths the four crisp packets would magically disappear!

It is any wonder people struggle with maths when it's full of gobbledygook

By the way, would anyone want one of my crisps? They're cheese 'n' onion.

Think about eggs in boxes

1 box has 6 eggs - 1 x 6 = 6 eggs

2 boxes have 12 eggs - 2 x 6 = 12 eggs

Now if I have 0 boxes then I have 0 eggs - 0 x 6 = 0 eggs

I'm sat here at my keyboard with no egg boxes, and I can assure you there are no eggs here either!

My basic calculator says that the answer is 40, but galculator on my computer says it's 31.

The answer is 31, get over it and face that it is 31.

When I was at school we were told that mathmaticians are, basically, lazy. So rather than write

3 + (7 x 4)

they just write 3 + 7 x 4 as the BODMAS rule implies the brackets.

The brackets are then only used when not to use them would screw up the calculation eg

(3 + 7) x 4 if you really did want the result to be 40.

The problem is some people were never told/have forgotten this and start plugging the numbers in left to right.

Shrike,

With respect, you're doing the naughty thing and saying 0 x 6 = 0. But that wasn't what I was saying! I said

10 x 0. (I'll use 10 rather than your 6)

10 comes first based on the logical left to right rule I was taught early on at school so we establish there is a 10. 10 exists. Then the 0 (zero) comes next in the sum. So we've got a real 10 and an abstract zero. If we multiply the real 10 by the abstract 'not real ' 0 the answer is always 10.

If you want to assert

0 x 10

I suppose you could say "well, if I start out with nothing and I multiply it by 10 then I must end up with nothing" but this is undermined by the fact 0 + 1 is 1 and not 0.

It seems maths wants to have its cake and eat it. If you have nothing and multiply it by any figure you always end up with nothing but if you add a number to nothing you get a real number!

For the rules to make true sense, I think it should be like this

10 x 0 = 10

When you start off with a real number the result is always a real number, never a zero. However, if you start off with a zero, a nothing, the results should be:

0 x 10 = 0

0 + 10 = 0

0 divided by 10 = 0

0 - 10 = 0

I think that makes more sense than the system we've got. Also, the idea of negative numbers sounds a bit silly. If you have a zero - that means nothing, right? - so how can you then go from 0 to minus 1. That makes no sense.

People will say "we have that with the temperature - we have zero degrees centigrade and minus degrees centigrade" but if you really think about it logically, if you establish the concept of NOTHING as a measurement, then nothing (pardon the pun!) can be below it. Once you have nothing there's no number below it. Nothing is the bottom. You can't go lower than that because nothing is absolute. That's the end of the line, folks. Nothing is the last station on the track. You can't carry on down the line to the next station because nothing is the end of the line.

The concept of minus numbers is bizarre because it negates the concept of zero actually representing an absolute 'nothing' numerical measurement.

Well you should also have been taught that multiplication is commutative

So the sum works both ways - 10 x 0 = 0 x 10



Edit to add:
0 - 10 = 0

Hmmm - so if I have £0 in my bank account, I can withdraw £10 and still have £0? I'm liking that!

What makes this rule logical? Presumably the fact you've grown up with the western tradition of reading/writing from left to right. Would it seem so logical if you had grown up in a culture that read vertically or from right to left?

The rules of maths are the rules of maths, not what you have arbitrarily decided is logical.

This week wasn't basic maths though. It was the blackhole of presenting to retailers with artificial products and figures . They had no way of knowing what their costs would be for different quantities - unless they were given a fact sheet for game purposes that said so. If they had the sheet saying a million would cost x, it was a reading problem. If they didn't have it, it was silly to come up with imaginary figures from nowhere. The silly bit was assuming a million sales and saying so.

Normally, there are no detailed figures asked or offered because I imagine they don't exist. There's a bit of a mystery why they went down that route, this task, this show.

I suspect this calculator is one of the very simple ones which when you enter the x in the calculation the number 10 pops up. Scientific calculators wait until the = key is pressed, which then activates the correct multiplication and addition.

In any case - this thread really does prove the point that poor numeracy is a problem..


Agreed - I was tempted to try to explain but there really is little point.

On another thread someone said

40+40 x 0+1 =

(you can Google all the posts about it!)

I replied:

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showp...&postcount=160

It cannot be 41 based on my Chocolate system!

Seriously, it can't. It's 81. Using logic it's always 81.

I've eaten too much chocolate. 40 bars. Blergh.

"It cannot be 41 based on my Chocolate system!"

I am having that quote put on my headstone.

http://picturesofsmileyfaces.net/smi...out-tongue.png

I posted this on another thread but I think this totally proves my point, is completely logical and reinvents the basics of maths too!

Getting back to sanity, who can sport the error in the "lawn and pond" example on this page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebit...aehirev1.shtml

Just to add...

'Multiply' means to double the original numerical value by a given number. 5 doubling itself once is 5. If you double it twice you get 10. We all accept that. So if you got 5 and you double it by zero you don't get zero, the five remains.

Anyone seriously doubting that needs his/head examined!

It's just a rule of Maths, and it might not make sense, but that's just tough. Guess you'll just have to live with the fact that 5x0=0.