this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Jokes and tricks that hinge on unclear communication (eg: not using parenthesis or other notation to make intent clear), and then are smug when people are tricked, remind me of the old xkcd https://xkcd.com/169/
I just saw some jokes about factorials so at least I got this one, heh.
Sorry but what is unclear in OPs image?
25 - 5 ÷ 5
when read naively left to right looks like it would be "25 - 5 = 20. Then take that and divide by 5, for an answer of 4". It would be clearer to write it as(25 - 5) ÷ 5
or25 - (5 ÷ 5)
depending on what's intended.You see those kind of "gotcha!" posts online sometimes, where someone posts a problem that tempts you into doing order of operations wrong.
Someone who sees how to do it correctly immediately and thinks everyone knows that is invited to view https://xkcd.com/2501/ as well.