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#### Sprocket

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Copied this problem from another Kawasaki motorcycle forum which turned out to originally be from the Harley Davidson forum. It generated 17 pages of different answers on the Harley site where it was originally post - as most of us know there is only one right answer in math. Make you own assumptions about the average HD riders education.

? = 48 / 2 ( 9+3 )

is it.....
A) 2
B) 288
C) some other number

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Wow... They can still communicate via the internet.

#### Pete_

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Oh dear... I've been through this on another forum that I frequent already. I decline to participate in this again.

But have fun by all means...

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B) 288.

#### layne1663

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'Rithmatik

My \$.02: Order of Operations says do the stuff inside the parentheses before doing multiplication and division, so 48/2(9+3)= 48/2(12)=48/24=....2!:clap:

#### twowheels

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My \$.02: Order of Operations says do the stuff inside the parentheses before doing multiplication and division, so 48/2(9+3)= 48/2(12)=48/24=....2!:clap:
after you solved for the brackets you did the multiplication which is after the division operation

PEMDAS
parenthesis
exponents
mult & div

48 / 2 * 12
24*12
288

i can see the confusion though, if you don't work with stuff like this (engineer, programmer/analyst, etc. ) it's easy to get rusty.

Reading some of the responses on the HD site i suspect there could there be a statistical correlation between motorcycle seat height and the rider's mathematical ability

#### Pretbek

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288

Parentheses first.
Multiplication and division are equal operators, so they must be solved in order from left to right. 48/2(12) = 288.

#### offcamber

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I'm not smarter...at least when it comes to math....I'd like to use a life line please...

#### Bones

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B) 288

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48 / 2 ( 9+3 ) = 48 / 2 ( 9+3 )

#### Pismocycleguy

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Math background

48 / 2 ( 9+3 ) = 48 / 2 ( 9+3 )
Hey,
I can see that you have mastered this subject?:interesting:

#### chid

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it is very simple....
you put the formula in Excel...
result :288

(48 / 2) * (9 + 3) = 288

#### Pretbek

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Meh. This thread is not getting by far as amusingly heated as on other forums.
Come on guys, put your back into it!

#### brothercannon

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I did the math in my head first and came up with 288 then I used wolfram alpha to confirm.

#### vp7

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Unfortunately the way this formula is written is a bit of a trick. If you assume that 48 is divided by everything that is after the / then it would be 2, if you assume the multiplication is after everything then it's 288. Fun

#### Sprocket

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If it was written out by hand it would be easier to read with a horizontal line drawn between numerator and denominator - hard to do on a calculator on computer.

Computers don't have a divide symbol on their keyboard so the slash "/" is usually used instead.

? = 48 / 2 ( 9+3 )

for it to be 2 I think it would have to be written as either A or B below

A)

48
_______
2(9+3)

B)

= 48/(2(9+3))

#### brothercannon

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Wolfram Alpha changed the format to something that makes the order of operations more apparent.

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#### stagehand38

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very silly indeed.

#### Hardware

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Like many things in life, it’s not just what you do, it’s when you do them
.

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