At the risk of alienating all of my readers, here's another "Kids Say the Darndest Things" post. (For the third week in a row!) This one was featured in the March 2015 issue of the New Era.
Someone at the New Era changed the equation from "70 x 7 - 34" to "70 x 7 - 4." I guess that someone didn't like the idea of a big brother picking on his sister 34 times. (I suspect that someone also never had a big brother.)
The New Era editor, apart from being inexperienced in the ways of older brothers, also missed an opportunity to insert parentheses to clarify the math. This equation is presumable (70 x 7) - 4 (which comes to 486), based on the scriptural reference. A change in the placement of the parentheses would have worked in the kid's favor: 70 x (7 - 4) = 210, a considerably smaller sum of mea culpas.
Someone at the New Era changed the equation from "70 x 7 - 34" to "70 x 7 - 4." I guess that someone didn't like the idea of a big brother picking on his sister 34 times. (I suspect that someone also never had a big brother.)
ReplyDeleteThe New Era editor, apart from being inexperienced in the ways of older brothers, also missed an opportunity to insert parentheses to clarify the math. This equation is presumable (70 x 7) - 4 (which comes to 486), based on the scriptural reference. A change in the placement of the parentheses would have worked in the kid's favor: 70 x (7 - 4) = 210, a considerably smaller sum of mea culpas.
ReplyDeleteWhether you got to 486 or 210, I won't share, dear big brother.
DeleteHowever, when you use PEMDAS, the multiplication ends up going first anyways.
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