Okay, so my teacher gave us this to solve:
a + b / c = 2
In this equation he explained that there were many ways to do it. However, we were told to do it with at least two negative numbers. I was a bit stuck at this one, however, more than a couple of students in my class had figured it out anyway.
So one of the solutions to this problem was to do -1 - 1 / -1 = 2 ( - & + becomes - and then - & - becomes +). (Of course assigning a, b and c -1 as a value). Another solution was to do for example -5 + 1 / -2 (a=-5 b=1 & c=-2 and the - / - is +).
However, there was still something that didn't seem right, although I could see the logic of how these made the answer. But then I realized what was bugging me. The order of operations, which states that you always should do multiplication and division before addition and subtraction (which is something these equations do not follow). So I raised my hand and asked the teacher about this, and he just told me that this wasn't the case for these kind of math problems.
He also told me that he had no logical answer to why it wasn't.
However, I also asked another (outside) person about this (whom is exeptionally good at math), and she told me that it didn't matter if it was letters (algebra) or just normal numbers, the order of operations would still have to be used. In which case what I learned in class is wrong. So my question is, what is right and what is wrong? And also why?
If anyone could help med with this it'd be awesome!
Kind regards ~
+129839 As written we have a + b / c = 2 .... which actually means a + [ b / c] = 2
Of course there could be infinite solutions, but one of them would be if a = 0 , b= -2 and c = -1 because
0 + [ -2/ -1] =
0 + 2 =
2
Another possibility is if a = -1, b = -6 and c = - 2
Notice that -1 - 1 / -1 would actually give us .... -1 - (1/-1) = -1 - (-1) = -1 + 1 = 0
