Thread: 6÷2(1+2)=?

There is a pretty extensive debate on another forum about this problem. Some answer it as 9, others answer it as 1. Can someone please give me an outsiders perspective on this? What is your answer? How did you reach it?

Originally Posted by GTMotion

There is a pretty extensive debate on another forum about this problem. Some answer it as 9, others answer it as 1. Can someone please give me an outsiders perspective on this? What is your answer? How did you reach it?

Watch this guy explain with a similar problem ( 48÷2 (9+3) ) :


In a nutshell, the problem is ambiguous and nothing more than a troll.

Yes, I have seen this question at least 30 times on Yahoo Answers during the past week, and it is said to have come from facebook, which surprises me...I thought facebook was all about 12 year old girls bullying one another.

Originally Posted by MarkFL2

Yes, I have seen this question at least 30 times on Yahoo Answers during the past week, and it is said to have come from facebook, which surprises me...I thought facebook was all about 12 year old girls bullying one another.

Questions almost exactly similar to this one have been on the internet for about 2 years now. Some troll posts it on a forum to watch the guaranteed mania afterwards.

Yes, I have seen them come and go too...on the site I help to moderate, we usually lock the first topic after the correct result is posted, then delete any subsequent duplicate postings of the topic.

See, I got 1 as my answer, but I've been away from school for 12+ years so...I'd ask for a second and third opinion. This is how I got it:
6/2(1+2) ------> At some point I was taught that anything in parenthesis is always done first, which means this would be next:
6/2(3) -------> multiplication is supposed to follow so then:
6/6 and..
1 tada!!
But like I said, I've been out of school for way too long. I hope this helps and if needed, please correct me.

Multiplication and division are done with the same precedence from left to right, so we would have:

6/2(1+2) = 6/2(3) = 3(3) = 9

If we wish for the division to be done first, then we would write:

6/(2(1+2))

As it has been given though, is the same as:

(6/2)(1+2)

Originally Posted by pattyhernandezcaldera

See, I got 1 as my answer, but I've been away from school for 12+ years so...I'd ask for a second and third opinion. This is how I got it:
6/2(1+2) ------> At some point I was taught that anything in parenthesis is always done first, which means this would be next:
6/2(3) -------> multiplication is supposed to follow
6/6 and..
no ... multiplication has the same precedence as division. 6/2 first, then multiply by 3.
9 is the correct value of the expression.

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