This week started for me with a very interesting phone call. It was from a gentleman from the United States looking for algebra based educational materials. I thought he must have the wrong number and forwarded him to Winthrop Australia (a Perth based computer firm associated with the University of WA)*. I thought that they would be able to assist due to their association with the university and education.
Anyhow, they sent him back to me and during the second call, I realized that the caller, Jim, was talking about my Friday Funny posts which sometimes included algebra problems! Once we had worked out the common ground, Jim and I had a long chat about Order of Operations and adding negative numbers. Jim is part of a Facebook group and often posts puzzles for the others to solve.
He found the same problems that I found. Many people don’t know about Order of Operations, or do know, but cannot implement them correctly or just cannot add negative numbers. For more information see: Answer: Only for genius ?? 3 – 3 x 6 + 2 = ??.
That phone call prompted me to find a new graphic algebra problem for you to solve….
The puzzle image follows a standard format where it provides the answers to the first three equation, which should provide the information you need solve the fourth equation.
Below is a poll for you to record your answer:
Please comment on how you went, but don’t give away the answer.
Thanks for the chat and the great feedback Jim.
David
* The Winthrop in Winthrop Development Consultants and Winthrop Australia is actually the same Winthrop. Winthrop Development Consultants is named after the suburb I live in. The suburb was created on land originally owned by the University of Western Australia (UWA) and was named after the university’s founding chancellor, Sir John Winthrop Hackett. Winthrop Australia started as the university computer shop and was named after the same person.
This article was originally posted on http://www.winthropdc.com/blog.
Hey David. I voted.
See you in Phoenix!
Very intrusting puzzle
Most people don’t pay clear attention to the cherry on the bottom.
I just want the answer lol
Louise, B=15, C=5, A=4. 15+5*4=15+20=35
A Banana is 15 plus a cherry 5 is 20. Multiply 20 by a green apple (4), why would it not be 80?
Hi Klevis. Because the order of operations rules of mathematics say you must perform multiplication and division before addition and subtraction. Try again.
Per PEMDAS order of operations you multiply first then add so 5*4 is 20 plus 15 is 35. That’s why its not 80.
the correct answer isn’t even and option. The two cherries together are 10. Left cherry (stem leans to the right) is the 1 and the right cherry (stem leans left) is the 0. Together they are 10. If you assume the cherries together equal 10 (each cherry is is 5) then in the picture, replacing the pictures with numbers, it would look 55 + 55 = 20. That equation would be incorrect..
The correct answer to this is 19..
Hi Jimmy. You are assigning values to the stems purely by your decision. This could make each cherry pair value of 10, be 0&10,1&9, 2&8, 3&7, 4&6, 5&5, 6&4, 7&3, 8&2, 9&1, 10&0. I don’t think you can assign arbitrary value to the stems.