I wrote a (very long) blog post about those viral math problems and am looking for feedback, especially from people who are not convinced that the problem is ambiguous.
It’s about a 30min read so thank you in advance if you really take the time to read it, but I think it’s worth it if you joined such discussions in the past, but I’m probably biased because I wrote it :)
I really hate the social media discussion about this. And the comments in the past teached me, there are two different ways of learning math in the world.
True, and it’s not only about learning math but that there is actually no consensus even amongst experts, about the priority of implicit multiplications (without explicit multiplication sign). In the blog post there are a lot of things that try to show why and how that’s the case.
It’s not taught 2 different ways. It’s taught the same around the world (the mnemonics are different but the rules are the same), there’s just 2 types of people - those who remember the rules and those who don’t. You’ll notice students never get these questions wrong, only adults who’ve forgotten the rules.