Easy-looking math sum leaves people confused - can you solve it without a calculator?
5+5 x 5+5
The article shows the two ways to go wrong. In one method the answer is 100, and in the other the answer is 55.
The article says to use the acronym PEMDAS - p stands for parenthesis, then exponents, multiplication and division and then adding or subtracting.
We who took arithmetic know the answer is 35 and we never learned the PEMDAS acronym.
You can find all kinds of math tricks. One of the websites is Interactive Mathematics and it has lots I didn't know about. And these are real tricks. We'd have to memorize them - and as I said, there are lots.
Some of them are fun - the butterfly method for adding and subtracting fractions. Go take a look at them HERE.
Knowing how to do all of this is great What will I use it for? We'd have to start doing some of the following every day: cooking and baking, budgeting and finances, shopping, time management, home improvement, driving, sports and games, travel, gardening (planting in rows) and so on.
The article concludes: "Just think how often you encounter numbers in your daily routine."
I didn't mean to work on a winter picture yesterday but this bridge over Wilket Creek at the Toronto Botanical Gardens seemed a perfect candidate for simplification in a watercolour image. Here's the original and the watercolour version.
