quizcall channel

[lynbrown]

Did anyone see the puzzle at 6pm this evening whem 5 + 30 divided by one half came to 65? How did they work that one out?

[Aquariel]

30 divided by one half is 60, plus 5 = 65

[mohill]

Aquariel, I hope you don't mind if I add this bit.

When you have  a maths problem with a mix of plus, minus, multiply and divide, then regardless of their order in the problem you must do multiply and divide before doing add and subtract

So  5 plus 30 divided by one half  means  first do 30 divided by one half (which is 60) and then add the 5.

Cheers

[smouse]

but what happened to the good old days of brackets

[boaw]

The word used was BODMAS - Brackets, of, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction - in that order.

[mohill]

Thanks smouse and boaw.  You are correct but I was just keeping it simple and appropriate to the example.

Note that BODMAS can cause a difficulty in some examples if it is followed literally, eg in a problem such as :

10 - 4 + 3.   If you use the order AS, ie add and then subtract, you would get 10 - 7 = 3 instead of the correct answer 9

BODMSA is preferable.