According to order of operations, you solve whatever is in the parentheses first. That gives you 4. Then, in PEMDAS, multiplication and division take equal precedence, so you’d do the first that ...

A similar math problem went viral in 2011, when people couldn't agree on the answer to 48÷2(9+3). Presh Talwalker, the author of "The Joy of Game Theory: An Introduction to Strategic Thinking ...

To help students in the United States remember this order of operations, teachers drill the acronym PEMDAS into them: parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction.