A key part—though surely not the only part—of early-grades math is ensuring students get the basic arithmetic functions down and, beyond that, making sure they’re able to swiftly and automatically ...

Everyone agreed on the first step: Solve inside the parentheses, for 2+2=4. But after that, people split down two paths. Some multiplied first, while others divided, leading to different answers—1 and ...

The reason why people are divided is because there are two different ways of solving math problems. For the PEMDAS method you solve in the order of: Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, ...

The answer could be 1 or it could be 16, or it could be both. There are two problems, according to the computer science professor: the order and the obelus. An obelus is this: ÷ and it has a variety ...

For about a decade now, mathematicians and mathematics educators have been weighing in on a particular debate rooted in school mathematics that shows no signs of abating. If you're like most, your ...

This summer, battle lines were drawn over a simple math problem: 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2) = ? If you divide 8 by 2 first, you get 16, but if you multiply 2 by (2 + 2) first, you get 1. So, which answer is right?

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. Viral math problems have been known to ...