The answer is 178,910,723.64382
Don’t ask me why I calculated that
I don’t accept your answer. I know deep in my heart that it’s 4.
I got the same thing on my phone’s calculator. Do you think the waterproofing will get in the way when I give it the baptism it clearly needs?
That’s so ugly, it can’t be correct… 4 is much nicer
Glad you did though, only opened the comments to see what the actual answer was.
Ya beat me by seconds. Lemmy is truly blooming lol
I got 178,910,723.30891
My answer is superior.
Well, 4 wasn’t that far off, considering.
There’s a 4 in the more accurate answer. That is proof of the divine showing the truth before man could understand the full answer.
This guy apologetics.
It was only a couple orders of magnitude off.
2 is a couple, 9 is more like fewish
2 is a couple.
What’s a few, several, a bunch, a bit, many, a bundle?
2 is a couple, nine is that pron crew.
Do we really want to live in a world where this fraction is the answer? I would like my kids to grow up knowing it’s an integer
No thank you! Integer is too close to the devil’s word: integration!
Round down for simplicity. Yes, yes, I can see 4 being the easy answer.
I saw three different serious-looking answers, so I punched it into a spreadsheet to get my own answer. What I got matches your answer, but with an extra 2 at the end.
Yeah, I reached my digit quota that day.
That is too complicated for me to understand, therefore, it is too complicated for everyone to understand. Why would anyone believe something that I can’t understand?
That is just a theory. You should present both sides. Also a majority of religious scholars say it is 4.
Heathen! At that scale the digits after the decimal point aren’t significant. I’m sure you know that in your heart. Why can’t you accept an obvious universal truth?
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You aren’t supposed to read it literally. 4 is metaphorical.
Well God is a trinity and is therefore also divisible by 3, checkmate atheists!
I have a guy feeling that one of these days Zach will make the old URL format not work anymore. So here’s the same comic in the new format (found by going to the next comic, then the previous) https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-10-31
this changes nothing and I have nothing to add, have a nice day
The product ends in a 5 so it is odd and cannot be divisible by 4.
They’d then go to war
Those damn people worshipping their rabbit god when we know for a fact the duck god is the true god! Now they refuse to believe the answer is 4.
This means war!
Only when the other guy starts saying it’s -7 with equal confidence.
179288872.22473
Pretty sure it’s 4
That other number is long and complicated and scary. I looked into my heart and found that 4 was the answer that spoke to me the loudest.
“it is 4” – Me 1:1
Well there’s a 4 in it so it’s basically a 100% true prediction, buy my book to see the next one
This checks. I estimated it to under 1/5 billion.
To the OP, some periods or commas would have been nice.
To the 4ists, Yeah. Well, ya know, that’s just, like, your opinion man.
Yeah I know, I had copied it from a calculator but thought it had copied the commas
I was just jesting. No commas, (or periods for overseas friends), made the cartoon harder, which made the post funnier.
Good post!
I would have said “42” and walked away
Pretty sure his theory is a hypothesis.
It’s not that far off. Math philosophy gets nuts
I remember back in the day when we were all up in arms about sets
On a cosmological scale the real answer and 4 are effectively the same number.
Edit: not sure I understand the down votes…
I got the joke.
At least calculator provides answers.
178.9107236438E6 in case you got nerd sniped.
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I mean, that sounds like the reasoning behind the order of operations, to me. At least that’s the only reason I’ve ever been given.
The order of operations is a convention created by humans so as to ensure a consistent understanding of mathematical expressions. The reason for them being the way they are is merely because that’s what we’ve agreed upon.
No, they have to be the way they are as a result of the way the operators have been defined. e.g. 2x3 is shorthand for 2+2+2, so if you don’t do multiplication before addition then you get the wrong answer, hence the order of operations rules.
I wish I could have been in the room. You know someone was like, “Eh, just left to right. We’ll use parentheses to specify an order when it’s necessary.” Then someone else said, “What if we use this system of various rules instead.” If I were there, I would have killed that person to save mankind.
All order of operation rules are made up, but some of them are more useful than others. Rules that jive with associative and communtative laws are preferred.
Or come over to RPN and stop worrying about it.
All order of operation rules are made up
None of them are made-up. They are all a natural consequence of the way things have been defined. e.g. 2x3 is shorthand for 2+2+2, so if you don’t do multiplication before addition then you get the wrong answer, hence the order of operations rules.
The order of operations is made from consensus. Just like we all agree the first letter of the alphabet is “A”. You could make the order of operations whatever you like, you would just need to rewrite equations to reflect that change.
The order of operations is made from consensus.
No it isn’t. It’s a natural consequence of the definitions in the first place. e.g. 2x3 is shorthand for 2+2+2, so if you don’t do multiplication before addition then you get the wrong answer, hence the order of operations rules.
Your argument is circular in nature. The right answer is dependent upon the order that you do the operations. So you can’t use the argument that the order of operation matters. Because if you do the math not using the correct order of operations, the answer comes out incorrectly.
For example, we could just do away with order of operations all together and explicitly use parentheses everywhere. While the system would be extremely painful to use, it would result in a consistent mathematics.
So there’s nothing inherently correct about our current order of operations. I will say that I like it and that it makes sense to me.
If you want a fun Wikipedia trip look up reverse polish notation (RPN). If I have to do away with the current order of operations, I might look to this as a possible alternative.
Your argument is circular in nature
No it isn’t. The order of operations rules are derived from the definitions of the operators - there’s nothing circular about that.
The right answer is dependent upon the order that you do the operations
And so to get the correct answer, you have to do the operations in the correct order, yes.
So you can’t use the argument that the order of operation matters
But you just said it did when you said “The right answer is dependent upon the order that you do the operations”!
if you do the math not using the correct order of operations, the answer comes out incorrectly
Exactly! Glad you agree with me. :-)
we could just do away with order of operations all together and explicitly use parentheses everywhere
Except I showed here that most people put brackets in the wrong place to begin with.
So there’s nothing inherently correct about our current order of operations
I already gave the proof of why it is. We already know that 2x3=2+2+2 by definition, so therefore 2+2x3=2+6=8. If you did addition first you’d get 2+2x3=4x3=12, which is demonstrably wrong. Welcome to how the order of operations rules were derived to begin with.
I will say that I like it and that it makes sense to me
It makes sense because it’s been proven to be correct.
Ok, but why does 2 * 3 = 2 + 2 + 2 mean that we should prioritize multiplication and division over addition and subtraction? I don’t understand this argument. This seems to be your central point, but I don’t see how math would be broken if we flipped the order? It just feel like a story you are overly attached to. I’ll take a source if you got one.
Take 2 + 3 * 4 for example. If you use our normal order of operations. We would interpret this as (2 + (3 * 4)) = 14. This is correct and fine. If you flip the order of operations it becomes ((2 + 3) * 4) = 20. This is also correct and fine. All the order of operations does is dictate how we interpret the equation. As I listed in my post there are even notations where equations can be written without considering the order of operations like RPN. In RPN ((2 + 3) * 4) becomes 4 2 3 + *
And so yeah, if everyone agreed to flip the order of operations, we would need to re-write a lot of equations, but we could do it and there wouldn’t be an issue. Heck we could all agree to switch to RPN and then we could get rid of the order of operations all together, because it just a way to interpret equations that are ambiguous due to infix notation. I am not saying we should, I am saying we could and nothing would break.
Ok, but why does 2 * 3 = 2 + 2 + 2 mean that we should prioritize multiplication and division over addition and subtraction?
Because multiplication is shorthand for addition, and if you don’t expand it before doing the addition you get wrong answers. Let me show you…
Multiply first (i.e. correct)
2+3x4=2+3+3+3+3=14 - the right answer, by the very definition of 3x4=3+3+3+3
Now let’s see what happens if we do the addition first…
2+3x4=5x4=5+5+5+5=20 - which we know is the wrong answer! (because we already know the right answer is 14, because we already know that the actual original fully expanded expression was 2+3+3+3+3, so the rules of Maths have to guide us back to getting the same thing the original author started with, or it all breaks down! The author took 2+3+3+3+3 and wrote it as 2+3x4, so the rules of Maths have to make sure when we see that we get back to 2+3+3+3+3)
So the fact that we know multiplication is shorthand for addition, means we have to multiply before we add. Similarly, exponents are shorthand for multiplication (2³=2x2x2), so we have to do exponents before we do multiplication… which we have to do before we do addition! It all comes from what these very things have been defined as meaning in the first place.
I’ll take a source if you got one
Well, I just showed you by doing the Maths myself, which is one of the great things about Maths - some things you can prove it to yourself! :-) And that’s another topic I wrote about here and here.
I still don’t see where the correctness is coming from. Also, when I was asking for sources I was looking for other experts to backup your claims. Otherwise I can just counter source you with my previous posts.
2 + 3 * 4 only has a correct answer if you assume the current order of operations. Without order of operations, this equation is meaningless and has no value. This is why I’m saying your arguments are circular. You are saying that 14 is the correct answer because of the order of operations. And you’re saying the current order of operations is correct because the answer is 14. These arguments don’t stand on anything except for themselves. Am I missing something?
