A Simple To Solve Equation,

well you would have thought so,

Image credit: pjmdolI how difficult can this be? I was taught to complete the sum in the brackets first,

 2+2 equals 4, 

then 8 ÷ 2 equals 4, 

next 4 X 4 equals 16, 

or 4 + 4 equals 8, 

but it is not quite so simple as that, apparently there is a huge amount of confusion on the Internet regarding the answer,

  Image credit: ClassyXhakalaca

 mage credit: JungKookQueen97

Image credit: emocowboy410

Image credit: lauram_williams

Image credit: fcb_banter odds are that you got one of two answers: you either belong to the huge swathe of internet users who got 1 or you’re one of the people whose answer is 16, the internet is raging with amateur and professional mathematicians debating what the real answer is, the reason why there’s a lack of consensus regarding this equation is a fairly simple one, different people are using different rules about what order everything should be calculated in. Whether, after adding 2 and 2 together in the brackets, you should divide 8 by 2 first or multiply what’s in the brackets by 2, instead, this sounds like a basic disagreement, but people got very heated over this, Robert Glenn Howard, a social psychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told Slate that such equations are the same as riddles and games, and people get heated over such things because Facebook and other forums are a place for discussion: “People are already primed to engage in pretty intense deliberations, and that can bleed over into the way they play games.” apparently I am the only person that came up with a third answer 8, so for a lot of people back to school!