My Little Brain Teaser Today
Alright, so today I was messing around, just trying to keep the old brain cells firing, and I stumbled upon this little number sequence: 5×5+5/5-5. Looked dead simple at first glance, you know? But I’ve been around long enough to know these things can sometimes trip you up if you’re not paying attention to how you tackle ’em.
Getting Stuck In
So, I figured, let’s actually work this one out properly. My first thought, maybe like a lot of folks, was just to go at it from left to right. But then something clicked, a little whisper from way back in my school days. You know, that order of operations thing they drilled into us. PEMDAS, BODMAS, whatever you wanna call it. That seemed like the way to go.
I grabbed a pen and the back of an envelope – nothing fancy. Here’s how I went about it:
- First up: I scanned that line of numbers and symbols. I was looking for any multiplication or division. Those are the big dogs; you gotta deal with them before you even think about adding or subtracting.
- So, I saw that 5×5. That’s a no-brainer. I did that bit: 5 times 5, that’s 25. Wrote that down.
- Then, still on the hunt for multiplication or division, I found the 5/5. Easy peasy. 5 divided by 5, that’s 1. Got it.
- Okay, so now I sort of mentally (and on my scrap paper) updated the whole thing. It now looked a lot friendlier: 25 + 1 – 5. Much cleaner, eh?
The Home Stretch
With all the multiplying and dividing done and dusted, it was time to handle the addition and subtraction. And with these, you just work your way from left to right, nice and steady.
- So, I took the first bit of what was left: 25 + 1. That crunched down to 26.
- Then, I just had one more step: take that 26 and do the – 5 part.
- And boom, out popped the answer: 21.
So, after all that, 5×5+5/5-5 = 21. That’s what I got, and I’m pretty confident about it.
My Take on It
It’s kinda funny, really. Such a simple looking string of numbers. But it just goes to show, you gotta follow the rules, especially with math. If you just charge in without thinking about the proper order, you can end up miles off. It was a good little mental jog for me today, that’s for sure. Kept the cobwebs from settling. Sometimes, just going back to these basic things and working them through step-by-step is all you need. A good reminder that the fundamentals matter.
