"I just began filling out a survey for a contest that Walmart is hosting. Since I live in Canada there is a skill testing question which was as follows (4×2)+(6/3)?5= The answer to the equation was omitted. What kind of mathematical significance does the question mark hold? I have tried Googling the equation for an explanation, but to no avail. Is the equation bunk? FWIW, the answer turned out to be 5... so obviously the question mark represented a subtraction symbol, but how was I ever supposed to induce that if the answer is/was omitted?"

tamola7f

tamola7f

Answered question

2022-09-09

I just began filling out a survey for a contest that Walmart is hosting. Since I live in Canada there is a skill testing question which was as follows:
( 4 × 2 ) + ( 6 / 3 ) ? 5 =
The answer to the equation was omitted.
What kind of mathematical significance does the question mark hold?
I have tried Googling the equation for an explanation, but to no avail.
Is the equation bunk?
FWIW, the answer turned out to be 5... so obviously the question mark represented a subtraction symbol, but how was I ever supposed to induce that if the answer is/was omitted?

Answer & Explanation

rougertl

rougertl

Beginner2022-09-10Added 16 answers

If you know the answer is 5, then you can guess that the ? is supposed to be a minus sign. Conversely, if you know that the ? is supposed to be a minus sign, then you can compute that the answer is 5.
Without one piece of information or the other, you don't have much to go on. But in hindsight, you could reason as follows:
The ? is a binary operator. Since there is no well-known operator rendered as a question mark, it is probably a rendering error.It is probably one of the elementary-school binary operators: +, −, ×, or ÷ aka /.
The operators +, ×, and / are already used in the expression, so we know that they were able to render those symbols. But − is not used elsewhere, so it remains possible that they couldn't render that symbol.
In a silly contest of this kind, they probably wouldn't repeat a symbol. Instead, they would try to use every operation the reader might know about. Again, by elimination, this suggests −.
The symbols + and / are part of ASCII, and they're unlikely to be corrupted. There is a hyphen "-" and a letter X in ASCII, but a true minus sign or multiplication sign is a more advanced symbol, which is more error-prone. This again suggests either − or ×.
Considering 3, 4, and 5, you have pretty good evidence that it was supposed to be a −. It's enough evidence to make a best guess, at least.

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