I found this in my Twitter feed, which I found interesting, because I normally see things of this form on Facebook.

FOR REAL MATH NERDS ONLY! SOLVE CAREFULLY! 230-220 x 1/2 = MOST PEOPLE WON'T BELIEVE IT, BUT THE ANSWER IS 5!

The problem

230 - 220 * 1/2 =
( 230 - 220 ) * 1/2 =
10 * 1/2 =
5

The answer is 5!

No.

Remember PEMDAS - Parens, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.

The order of operations is wrong.

230 - 220 * 1/2 =
230 - 110  =
120 =

The answer is 120?

Yes, but…

1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 =
2 * 3 * 4 * 5 =
24 * 5 =
120 =
5 factorial =
5!

So, yes, the answer is 5!.

But notice the punctuation.

This is a mathematical pun, relying on common mistakes, unfamiliar notation and Facebook meme convention disguise a correct answer as wrong.

And because this makes the user feel like Clumsy Pan Guy, I feel I must don an obnoxious sweater and say…

There has to be another way!

There is.

There was a logician from Poland named Jan Łukasiewicz, who came up with this notation + 1 2 instead of 1 + 2. Because of his nationality, it is called Polish Notation. (Not because, as I thought as a CS underground, of an obscure Polish joke I had never heard the setup to.)

Friedrich L. Bauer and Edsger W. Dijkstra re-invented this in the early days of computing, writing 1 2 + and calling it Reverse Polish Notation, and it became popular among people who liked it in HP scientific calculators. It is cool because it maps to a tree, and because it works well with a stack.

  +
 / \
1   2

This becomes more useful in later examples.

# rewriting the infix example as postfix/reverse polish 
230 - 220 * 1/2    
230 220 2 / - # equivalent to times 0.5 but easier to type

We need to find number number operator, so 230 gets pushed onto the stack, as does 220 and 2. When we get /, it pops the two, divides, and pushes then answer, 110, back onto the stack.

Then, the - operator comes, we pop 230 and 110. Subtract them and we get 120.

If we lived in the world of Reverse Polish Notation, we would never have to worry about PEMDAS again. The need for parens would go away, because left-to-right number number operator would be the only way to math.

But, true or nay, there would be great uproar over introducing such a thing. I’m here advocating for it, and I don’t know that I have used it in anger even once.

You can go deeper. With anything math-related, there’s always deeper. Mark-Jason Dominus gives a very good deep-dive on Precedence. As a good shorthand, if you’re writing and you aren’t sure what it should be, add parens until there can only be one choice.

If you have any questions or comments, I would be glad to hear it. Ask me on Twitter or make an issue on my blog repo.