I find the lack of intelligence depressing

[Liudeius]

It's not a matter of people just being so stupid that they don't understand order of operations, it's just a reflexive answer. You are always told in elementary school that anything x0 is 0. Personally I ran into quite a few such problems (where the answer actually was 0) that teachers just threw in for fun.

Because of this, many people immediately think 0 and click the answer without actually doing the problem. Even my first reaction was 0, then, when I noticed that all the 1's were +'s, I quickly corrected myself.

Add in the - hidden among the +'s and you have even more people wrong, people who actually took some time to think about it.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Lack of mathematical prowess is small factor in the broad range of "intelligence". Most people forget about PEMDAS when they enter the real world. Way to generalize.

no. you can't do simple day-to-day equations without this, it's such a basic and important part of math that you don't ever forget.

When in the real world do you ever have to multiply something by zero?

 

[Zukhramm]

Somehow, I think this is the fault of people knowing to many rules rather than too few. I never learned any "PEMDAS", and I can do maths just fine, I don't need a mnemotic phrase to understand "multiplications first". When people just apply rules they know without actually thinking they remember "if something is multiplied by zero, the result is zero", and they just answer.

 

[JediMB]

It's not a million people failing at maths on Facebook that bothers me.

What bothers me is when a portion of those people are obnoxious enough to make fun of the people who actually answered it right, which is then followed by hundreds of people hitting the "Like" link.

I've never had use for it, since I've learned the order of operations on an instinctive level, but I'll make sure to remember PEMDAS.

 

[Iron Mal]

no. you can't do simple day-to-day equations without this, it's such a basic and important part of math that you don't ever forget.

Actually, you can.

And it isn't as basic a part of mathamatics as you claim it to be (I personally don't remember learning about BODMAS/BIDMAS until year 10/11, that's Grade 10/11 for those of you in the US), it primarily is only important in problems and equations where you'll be required to do various parts of a problem in order to discover the correct answer (such as where brackets are involved or when you have to mix together both multiplacation and division), most of our ordinary day-to-day mathematics will usually revolve around basic addition, subtraction and occasionally simple multiplication or division, all things which don't really require extensive knowledge of BODMAS.

Somebody getting this question wrong doesn't automatically equal 'what an idiot'.

Sorry to burst your bubble there.

 

[Church256]

None of the answers are correct. 1x0 = 0. so 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1-1+1+1+1+1+1 = 15.

If there's anything wrong with that it's from the source material and not my fault (counted it out 3 times).

... There's 16 positive 1s, one is multiplied by 0 leaving 15 positive 1s and a negative 1. 14. Are you sure you counted the 1s correctly?

Bugger. I can't beleieve I did that. I added the -1 then took it away.

More proof my math skills are going downhill. >.>

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

Good god man, get off your high horse. I don't think anyone expects to do PEMDAS unless they're specifically told to do PEMDAS, which this doesn't do. You can't blame people for simply reading from left to right, which is what we've programmed ourselves to do. You can't fault people for not doing what they weren't told to do.

 

[i7omahawki]

Lack of mathematical prowess is small factor in the broad range of "intelligence". Most people forget about PEMDAS when they enter the real world. Way to generalize.

no. you can't do simple day-to-day equations without this, it's such a basic and important part of math that you don't ever forget.

Except that if you were adding 14 apples you would realise that it couldn't be 0, because you can see some goddamn apples.

The problem with some maths, and peoples' perception of it, is that it is abstract. With concrete examples, such as the 'day-to-day' equations you mention, they obviously won't come to the same conclusions as an abstract answer.

The fact that this information was sourced from facebook almost invalidates it as a measure of a person's intelligence. People don't go on there to think, and there is no consequence for getting it wrong.

If someone was actually trying to do something useful they probably would've thought harder about it.

I also like how you frame it as: This is what humanity is becoming, like humanity used to be some sort of super mathematic race...Most people such at mathematics, especially the abstract, but we got along until now, and I really don't think that the world's problems come down to the fact that people can't solve abstract puzzles but only concrete ones...It doesn't trouble me at all.

 

[BGH122]

the score of a complete stranger on the internet in a test that i myself never had to take because i live in a different country then you. gee, i am awed by your accomplishment. nice factoid about your laziness too.

you don't do anything else but shopping? i've worked vacationjobs selling coastal tram tickets to tourists. at the end of the evening, i had to make up my register. at which point i had to often do multiplications by 0. and i'm certain that everyone that ever worked any job involving money they had to turn in at the end of the day has had to do that too.

'Then' isn't the correct usage of that word. Then is an adverb, noun, connector and adjective: "I went outside and then it rained", "That was then", "He then went outside", "My then professor". Than is most commonly used a conjunction following a comparative adjective or adverb: "I live in a different country than you".

This is the problem with threads like these (and sarcastic, passive aggressive posts lauding one's intelligence), we all have weak spots in our knowledge. If we try to appear genius like we just end up sounding like giant posturing hypocrites when we're shown that we, like all humans, have gaps in our knowledge.

That aside, why did you have to divide by zero when working a till and why didn't you use a calculator? Whenever I'm working out how much stock has been sold etc I always make sure to use a calculator because these things are too important to rely upon error-prone human short term memory.

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

forget PEMDAS and stuff like that, BOMDAS sounds more powerful Sounds like you have a frikken explosive device on your math quiz and if you don't do the order of operations right this BOMDAS is gonna blow and take out not only you but your classmates as well.

also, my reflex answer was 0, then 14, then it became 15, then i saw the hidden - and it became 14 again.

Programming is screwing with me, cause i was thinking of the sum like a programming operations rather than a maths operation XD
(int '?' = 1+1+1..bla XD felt myself doublechecking it was an assignment( = ) instead of check ( == ) too XD)

 

[intheweeds]

Ok, I realise facebook isn't the place to go for intelligence but seriously...

This is one those vote quiz things that goes around. If you look the answer 0 is winning on almost a million. This means almost a million people since this stared, a week ago, cannot do simple maths.

What's more is this is just those on facebook who've seen this and bothered to answer. This is a seriously depressing realisation of what humanity is becoming.

Edited to remove typo in title.

Sorry to rain on your parade mate but that's an easy to mistake to make, I thought it was zero at first and not trying to sound full of myself but I study biological sciences at a well-known UK university (Exeter) and got 3 A's in science subjects at A-level. I'm hardly what you'd call dumb, most the people probably did similar to what I did, just thought of a quick answer without really checking the notation closely. Don't fear for humanity just yet =D

im pretty sure everyone agrees with you. The reason people get it wrong is because no one spends much time on a math problem on facebook and the problem is intended to be a trick. Personally, i am a business consultant and learning to be a computer programmer. I know enough about math to notice a quite serious mathematical flaw in a software application a customer had purchased, but i didn't remember BEDMAS until it came up in that thread the other day either. Nobody ever writes math problems in such a tricky convoluted way in real life.

 

[martin's a madman]

Lack of mathematical prowess is small factor in the broad range of "intelligence". Most people forget about PEMDAS when they enter the real world. Way to generalize.

no. you can't do simple day-to-day equations with this, it's such a basic and important part of math that you don't ever forget.

I also never forget to capitalise i's when they stand alone, and the start of sentences - something that seems to have escaped you.

See, just because you're not good in certain areas doesn't make you unintelligent.

I think he's pretty much made your whole point moot with this post.