this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Those math questions that rely on purposeful ambiguity in order to drive engagement are annoying as fuck. It's like "congratulations, you just proved that in math (and questions in general) if you're not clear with what you're asking, people will get different answers". What fantastic value! What a novel hypothesis! Now fucking knock it off. I'm tired of literally everyone screaming about how their way is right when it doesn't fucking matter, the question was asked in a bullshit way in order to piss everyone off.
Bonus, PEMDAS, BEMDAS, PE-MD-AS. It's a goddamn terrible mnemonic that twists itself in knots to make the acronym work, rather than to make the order of operations clear. Screaming it doesn't make your shit any clearer anyways.
Join me in RPN land, where we sit by looking smug while people thought different systems of infix notation debate the right answer.
There's not different rules of Maths though, and the people "debating" the answer are those who don't remember all the rules.
Three are also tests where you are expected to think like the person who made the test to figure or what the “correct” answer us. It’s not really correct, but it is the one that gets you the points.
Also some IQ question have several correct answers, but only one of them gives you the points. Super annoying. If you’re creative and smart enough to come up with a logically consistent answer you’re still not guaranteed to get the “correct” answer.
If they weren't ambiguous, then you wouldn't see them getting popular. The difference of opinion drives engagement which means it's more likely to show in your feed because that's how most social media algorithms work.
Things that everyone agrees on don't get engagement, so they don't bubble up to the top.
#MathsIsNeverAmbiguous They get popular because people who don't remember all the rules of Maths want to argue with the people who do remember all the rules of Maths. #DontForgetDistribution
Agree!! Things like "No dog breed begins with P!" Are equally annoying for me.
#MathsIsNeverAmbiguous The engagement is driven by people not remembering the rules of Maths. #DontForgetDistribution