- cross-posted to:
- unexpectedfactorial@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- unexpectedfactorial@sopuli.xyz
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Did nobody learn order of operations?
The meme is correct. It is 4!.
Yeah but it’s playing on the idea that the reader would think 25-5÷5 is 4. That’s the joke. Without it there’s no punchline.
No no, they’re saying “4!” literally is the answer. The joke is that you say 4!, the other person who presumably knows the order of operations assumes you got it wrong and did 25 - 5 = 20 ÷ 5 = 4 when really you do division first so the real answer is 24. The punchline is that “4!” is how you write 4 factorial or 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 which is 24.
Nothing goes over my head! My reflexes are too fast; I would catch it.
Yes, I understand that 4! is the correct answer. That is not my point. Without the misconception that the answer is 4, there is no punchline. This comic strongly implies that the natural assumption should be that the answer is 4, and that the secret, hidden answer is 24. In other words, in a world where people understand order of operations, the comic is not funny, because you wouldn’t look at that and think 4 is a reasonable answer.
The joke relies on, as you put it, the assumption you did it wrong.
What are you even talking about? In what world is the assumption supposed to be that the actual answer is 4 and that 24 is some kind of secret hidden answer?
The assumption being made by the comic is that the reader knows the order of operations and will think that the person answering 4! is the one that did it wrong and mistakes the ! operator for them being enthusiastically wrong.
No the joke is that first think they got wrong, then realize it’s a factorial so they got it right (the a-ha moment!).
Then we realize that they might not have gotten it because the wrong answer is 4 and they may not know of factorials.
The ambiguity is very clever. Some other commenters call it a pun.
that commenter was me. Try ctrl+f.
Your explanation of the joke would suggest that it would be equally funny if the question were “what’s 21 + 3?” But obviously that isn’t true – the joke is meant to be that both 4 and 4! are equally valid answers to the question. However, in reality, 4 is not a valid answer; I just feel the same disappointment any prescriptivist feels when they see a word misused.
No because 4 is the obvious wrong answer. 21+3 my isses idea completely.
4(exclamation) is wrong while 4(factorial) is right.
I think the smugness of someone who knows factorials is also part of what makes it fun.
Best math meme so far.
Clever! lol
for those that didn’t get it: clever factorial = brilliant
I understand why this is wrong (order of operations dictates the division happens first, so it’s really 25 - 1 = 24), but why is it funny? I don’t mean “This isn’t funny,” I think I’m just missing the joke.
4 factorial
I see no one has explained yet, so I’ll give it a shot. He is excited about math, and that needs to be encouraged.
Cause math people has a weird humor?
Sorry to said that, but you made my guess quite real.
The exclamation point in the answer, from a math perspective, makes it 4 factorial: 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24, which is the correct answer.
Could it be you’re responding to the wrong person?
Indeed, it could.
4! Is a factorial which means it’s 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
Totally missed that. Thank you.
The exclamation point makes it right. The formula, when worked with proper order of operations, equals 24, which is equal to 4 factorial (4!) 1 * 2 * 3 * 4=24
The exclamation point denotes the factorial function. 4! = 4 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 1
4! Is meant to be 4 factorial. 4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
Aha! Got it, thank you so much.
And here I was thinking I was still decent at math. I got bamboozled…
Everybody forgets the factorial…
I always get a chuckle every time someone posted this in an unrelated comment.
Especially when we have never seen that shit before
Or if you don’t know order of operations, then you probably also don’t know factorials, so 20 / 5 = 4
The fuck is a “factorial”? They didn’t teach me that one in high school math and I couldn’t afford college.
Factorial means n! = (n)(n-1)(n-2)… etc. down to 1, where n is a positive integer. It’s used to calculate the different number of configurations of a set of elements, mainly in combinatorics.
Like if you have four different objects and you want to know how many different configurations you can order them in, you have four choices for the first object, then three for the second, then two for the third, then one for the final slot. So the answer is 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24 = 4!.
What’s the point of factorials?
There are lots of applications, so I’ll give you three
Factorials are used in the Taylor Series to approximate trigonometric (sine, cosine, etc) and the exponential function. This can help speed up calculations.
In probability and statistics, if you want to find how many different ways a deck of cards can be shuffled, the answer is 52! Because the first card can be any of the 52, the second can be any of the remaining 51, and so on until the last card. Building upon this concept results in ways to model data like the binomial distribution , which is simply “how many successes will i get if i do this trial a certain number of times”. E.g. If I flip a coin 100 times, how many times will it be heads?
In computer science, the complexity of a program is compared to functions like the factorial, exponential, quadratic, etc. to visualize it’s performance given the size of the input, n. E.g. a program of linear time complexity is denoted as O(n), and as n increases, we expect the time for the program to finish to increase linearly. For a factorial time complexity, O(n!), we expect the time to complete to increase a lot compared to O(n)
They’re used in permutations and combinations a lot. Combinations is pretty obvious based on the name. Given X things, how many ways are there to choose Y. Permutations are the same but where order matters.
For example, if you shuffle a deck of cards properly randomly there will be 52! possible orderings (permutations).
the most tangible and direct application is how many different ways you can order x many items.
eg. how many diffe4rent ways can you order 3 items?
let’s say you have these 3 items: 🍏🫐🍒
the first one can be any one of the three, so you have 3 options. that’s 3 different ways to start your order. let’s write that down:
3
now for the second one. whichever one you picked for first position will be unavailable, so you’ll have 2 options this time. this is true for each first pick separately, so you multiply the possible number of first picka by the possible number of second picks:
3 x 2
now for the third item, since two of the three are already picked, you only have one left, which means not much to choose. you just multiply the 1:
3 x 2 x 1
of course multiplying by 1 doesn’t change anything but as we mentioned there was no option this time, once you pick the second fruit the third is also auto-picked, so the third item doesn’t add to our number.
so the final answer seems to be:
3 x 2 x 1 = 6
is that true? might feel like there should be more ways but let’s test it; can’t be that complicated:
- 🍏🫐🍒
- 🍏🍒🫐
- 🫐🍏🍒
- 🫐🍒🍏
- 🍒🍏🫐
- 🍒🫐🍏
here you go. you can extrapolate this logic to any number. four items would’ve followed the same sequence starting with 4 and have 1 less option with each pick, so 4 x 3 x 2 x 1. and that’s also 4!
Makes things shorter.
In the applications mentioned by other people, you run into calculations that would look really messy and confusing. Things like 5•4•3•2•1 can be shorted to just 5! Imagine writing the full version of 123!
Im sorry your highschool curriculum failed to teach you. I learned factorals in jr highschool
Is a factoral just 1X Because yeah i don’t think I learned that either, but I was taught exponentiation. Whats the value of factorals?
4 factorial (written as 4!) is 432*1
I think this example explains it perfectly lol
Just a small correction in case you didn’t know, but your answer shows as 432*1 because Lemmy formats text wrapped by * as italic, so it thinks you want to italicize the 3. You meant to write 4*3*2*1 (written as 4\*3\*2\*1). This is because \ is an escape character that tells lemmy not to take the * as a formatting character.
Right, i sometimes forget about markdown lol. Yeah, it obviously is 4•3•2•1
You didn’t learn factorials in high school?
In High School education, Factorials are generally part of the curriculum, but they’re one of those things you get one section on, it shows up on one test, then in common usage, you never see it again. In many schools, someone could have been out for a day, gotten two answers wrong on a test, and never have known it. Then in my school, unless you were heading on a math track, you’d hardly even touch Calculus to see it actually used anywhere.
Nerds!
(Im just mad cuz i can’t do math. Carry on… Nerds)
I’m only going to say this once but if I’m doing a sum and you want me to do it in a specific order, use brackets. That’s what brackets are for. Don’t expect me to do things in a predetermined order because I literally can’t be bothered and I will never care enough to do that. I’m already doing a sum so don’t push it, okay bud
well then you should stop doing math cuz you’re doing it wrong
Thanks I take enormous pleasure in never doing any maths at all ever, largely for reasons like this 😌
But that’s a bit like saying “If you’re going to talk to me, put the adjectives before the nouns,” even in Spanish where they come after. Mathematical notation is a language and it has a syntax. Sure, you can decide to ignore that syntax, or insist that people modify their use of it for you, but it’s not really a reasonable expectation.
I think this is very stupid for a number of reasons. Why is there an order of operations that supersedes the direction the operations are written in? That’s at best dim witted and at worst deliberately misleading. Grog write left to right. Grog read left to right. Grog do sum left to right.
There is absolutely no reason in the world why anybody should have to know that division comes before subtraction. That’s fucking insane, man. What is the point of writing things down if you’re only going to do them in a set order anyway? May as well have a big jumble of letters and numbers and symbols on the page at that point, like who cares. The whole point of writing things down is to express concepts. Can’t do that with any kind of nuance if you’re going to read it one way anyway, no matter how you write it down. That would be like saying you always pronounce certain letters at the start of words even if they’re in the middle. Completely nuts.
If all people did was simple equations like the one in the OP, you’d probably be right, but math syntax has to deal with all kinds of equations. Your way, I can’t write 3x^2–4x+5. Instead, I’d have to write ((((3x)^2)−4)x)+5. That’s WAY more obnoxious. It’s better to have an unambiguous syntax that covers all the cases and lets me write equations in an more simple form.
Very funny joke, but I don’t agree with the division sign. Its supposed to be either a / or \ depending on which way you want to divide.
never in my life have I seen a
\division sign.Well it was a joke, but it seems like a lot of people did not get it.
4! = …Wait, that’s literally the point of the post this time
Unexpected expected factorial
Unexpected incorrect answer in comments
Except it is correct. 4!=24
But then the username would be four_factorial
>3
:3
ASCII hack failure of language. Even in mathematics, ! has multiple meanings like with Boolean NOT. We need a science, math, and language reformation to remove non intuitive narcissistic names, and implied contextual meanings.
I believe you mean, “nice pun!”
I’ve never seen ! used for boolean NOT in maths, just ¬. I think ! is something programming languages went for because it’s easier to type. That said, screw (a, b). Is that a (coordinate) pair, an interval, an inner product, some secret fourth thing? Who knows!
Inner products are written as ⟨a,b⟩, no? Fair point on the interval, tho
You might find Lojban interesting if you are not already aware. (I haven’t tried to learn it myself, I just know it exists)
If someone wants to start a Lojban pun community, I would definitely subscribe just to learn about Lojban.
Although, if no one posted in the community, I wouldn’t be sure if it was a perfectly logical language or the community was just dead.
.i la lojban cu mutce lo ka smuske tinsa .i ku’i ly. na logji prane pe’i .i loi jbopre cu piso’iroi da’asnu lo ka prane nitcu .i ru’a lo klamburi cu na’e lojbo ka’u .i jy. xebni lo malgli .iseju lo nu lojbo klamburi zbasu cu nandu ba’a jeku’i cumki
Lojban is very logically rigid, but not perfectly logical IMO. Lojbanists often argue about the necessity of logical perfection. I suspect that puns might not be seen as culturally Lojbanic. Lojbanists hate Anglicisms or bits of English leaking into the way they speak Lojban. Regardless, making Lojbanic puns might be difficult but it’s possible.
Relevant xkcd
Promptly Evacuate Manure Drain And Septic
The answer in the comic is correct. It’s just written in a way to make you as the reader think he’s got it wrong for a second.
The ! operator in mathematics indicates a function called a factorial. Four factorial, or 4! = 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 24. Which is the correct answer if you follow the proper order of operations.
007 will never get this wrong, it’s 4, 24.
Ok this is funny
user has left the channel
#DAMN YOU MATHEMATICIANS! YOU GOT ME AGAIN!!!
