A math problem has been floating around online and it keeps tripping people up even though it looks pretty simple at first. Some folks jump in with confidence and still miss the answer which kind of makes the whole thing funnier than it should be.

It has been shared on threads where people are saying it is for geniuses only, and yeah that is probably exaggerated a bit but it definitely got people talking. You see a lot of users posting the right answer with their steps and then a bunch of others posting the wrong one like they are sure about it.

The equation they are all fighting over is 3×3-3÷3+3. When you take a quick look you probably go straight through it in the order it sits which is what a lot of people did. And that is usually when the trouble starts because you end up with nine minus three which gives six then six divided by three is two and then you add three and land on five.

But that is not actually correct. Some people online were even acting shocked about it and saying things like the world is doomed which feels dramatic but people talk like that when they think something is obvious.

So the real issue is that you have to use the normal order of operations which some of us learned as BIDMAS or BODMAS and in America it is PEMDAS. It is basically the same idea, you do the multiplication and division first and then go to addition and subtraction.

In the comments someone walked through the whole thing pretty clearly and they said: “To solve the mathematical equation correctly, we use the order of operations (PEMDAS/BODMAS: Parentheses/Brackets, Exponents/Orders, Multiplication and Division (from left to right), Addition and Subtraction (from left to right)). Here are the steps: 1. Perform multiplication and division first: 3 x 3 = 9 and 3 / 3 = 1 2. Substitute the results back into the equation: 9 – 1 + 3. 3. Perform addition and subtraction in sequence: 9 – 1 = 8, 8 + 3 = 11. So, the solution is= 11.”

So if you got 11 right off the bat, you are in good shape. If not, then maybe it is time to dust off whatever old math book you had sitting around because this one is definitely simpler than it feels at first.