I just got into some sort of argument with someone on Facebook because my answer to this statement:
Is 16.
And hers is 1.
What do you think?
It actually uses the division symbol instead of the slash, so we shouldn't confuse what is above or below the fraction. My phone isn't going to let me illustrate this, so I will use words. Order of operations, we do inside parenthesis first. 2 plus 2 is 4.
That leaves us with
8 divided by 2 times 4
The confusion is created because we can't decide whether to divide first or multiply first, but they are in fact the same operation.
Dividing by 2 can be rewritten as multiplying by 1/2, which is multiplying by 0.5
8 times 0.5 times 4
Now it doesn't matter which one you do first.
(8 times 0.5) times 4 is 16
8 times (0.5 times 4) is 16
8 divided by (2 times 4) is 1, but you have to impose parenthesis into the equation that were not first present.
The correct answer is 16 without a doubt, but it can be easy to make a mistake that looks like the right thing to do.