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A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months
(www.engadget.com)
this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Oh, but of course the statement changes if you add parentheses. Basically, you’re changing the effective numbers that are being used, because the parentheses act as containers with a given value (you even showed the effective numbers in your examples).
Get this : + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1
You can change the result several times by choosing where you want to put the parentheses. However, the order of operations of same priority inside a container (parentheses) does not change the resulting value of the container.
In the example, there were no parentheses, so no ambiguity (there wouldn’t be any ambiguity with parentheses either, the correct way of calculating would just change), and I don’t think you can add “ambiguity” by adding parentheses — you’re just changing the effective expression to be evaluated.
By the way, this is the reason why I absolutely overuse parentheses in my engineering code. It can be redundant, but at least I am SURE that it is going to follow the order that I wanted.