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please help me work this math problem

38 minus 10 plus 12 divided by 4 times 16 James
 

 

Hi James,

This is somewhat confusing. I expect that you got it from some contest, "The winning contestant must answer a skill testing question". If so then I think that you are to read from left to right and perform the operations as you go.

38 minus 10 is 28
28 plus 12 is 40
40 divided by 4 is 10
10 times 16 is 160 Thus the answer is 160.

The confusion is that mathematicians have an order in which they do arithmetic operations. The convention is to perform divisions and multiplications before additions and then subtractions. Hence if the problem had been written using mathematical notation rather than words,

38 - 10 + 12 4 16 I would probably do this as 38 - 10 + 12 4 16

12 4 = 3
hence
38 - 10 + 3 16.

3 16 = 48
hence
38 - 10 + 48 = 76 and get an answer of 76.

Harley 		 
 

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