I'm gonna make them fools into stickers~!!!

I am so glad my children are able to receive the blessing of homeschool! A long time ago I made the mistake of signing our oldest few up for a very liberal co-op. At the time I thought I was so clever, but looking back I realize how shameful it is to send your own children away from the home, just so they can be given all sorts of mixed messages about what God wants for them.

I’m confident that the answer is 4! here is why

this is our equation: 4 ÷ 2(2) = ?

first, it’s important to note that there is multiplication in this problem despite the lack of a written out multiplication symbol. when a number is right on the outside of a parenthesis, like one of our 2s is, there is an implied multiplication symbol next to it. another way this problem could be written is 4 ÷ 2 x 2 , and it would be the same problem (we’ll return to this idea later*)

now lets use PEMDAS, which is how I was taught order of operations. it’s an acronym with different operations in the order they should be done in. for this equation, we’ll only need to talk about P, M, and D.

starting with P, for parentheses. this being first means that any operations within a set of parentheses must be done first. in this equation though, the parentheses contain no operations, just a number (2). thus, we can move on.

now to M and D, multiplication and division respectively. while in the term PEMDAS, the M comes first, multiplication and division are actually meant to be done in one combined step (the same is true for addition and subtraction, though that does not come up in this equation). you are meant to do multiplication and division in the order they appear in a math problem. in our equation, the division comes before the multiplication, so first we would divide our 4 by 2. this would leave us with 2(2), which is 4!

*the reason so many people get tripped up on this problem (at least as far as I can tell) is because they assume the lack of multiplication sign means the step where you multiply 2 by 2 should be done during the “parentheses” in PEMDAS. if you did that first, you’d be left with 4 ÷ 4, which equals 1. but, because the operation being done in this step is multiplication, and it’s not being done entirely within the parentheses, it should be done during the multiplication/division step in PEMDAS, which, in this equation, would be after the first operation in the problem. (as a related example, in the equation: 4 x 2/(2), the division would not occur first simply because one number involved is in parentheses, because the operation itself is outside of the parentheses. though the operation symbol is not written out in our original equation, it gets the same treatment.)

I suspect some people also get tripped up because they have forgotten/were never taught that multiplication and division are done during the same step, in the order they appear in the equation.