The answer is 1
Order of operations, and dividing by 1/3 is what catches folks.
And how did you write “one-third” into wolfram alpha? I’m betting you used “1/3”, which is absolutely not the same thing, and rather the point of the whole exercise.
An appeal to authority doesn’t work so well when your very own biases creep into that authority. Garbage in, Garbage out and all that.
But as I (and several other posters) noted earlier, it’s one of those annoying internet order of operations problems specifically designed as a “gotcha”. Send it back to writer with a stern notice not to do it again.
I copy and pasted the OPs post. And it only becomes one-third after the operation resolves in the case of 1/3. Prior to that it is read as 1 divided by 3 since it’s used as an operator. That’s like saying 5 x 5 ought to be read as 25 prior to everything else in the expression being resolved in proper order.
I copy-and-pasted UDS’s transliteration into Wolfram Alpha and got 1. Neither of these is exactly identical to the way the expression looks in the video, but I believe UDS’s comes closer.
Isn’t it time to stop using this archaic abbreviated style of notation?
What style do you mean?
Dude. Why are you ALWAYS apologizing for your dear Aunt Sally, even to the point where you have to plaster your apologies all over the nation’s middle school walls?
She really sounds like more trouble than she’s worth. I’d lose her as quickly as I could, were I in your position. I mean, how “dear” can she be if you’re constantly having to ask people to excuse her?
And in middle schools yet! What the hell does she keep DOING?
You’re talking to the same sort of person who wants everyone to find his x. Dude, she’s over you. Get over it. We’re not going to find her.
As presented in the OP, there is a space before and after each operand except there is no space in the 1/3, so I interpreted it as a fraction. 3 ÷ 1/3 = 9. If there had been spaces used throughout my answer would be different: 3 ÷ 1 / 3 = 1.
Another indicator is the use of “÷” to represent the division step. If I saw that, I would assume any “/” would indicate a fraction, otherwise you’re using two different symbols for the same operation which is stupidly confusing.
Many posters above have mentioned this, but I am :dubious:
I am very reluctant to assign any syntactic or semantic meaning to the presence or absence of any gratuitous white space that may appear (or not) in any expression.