13th, 7th and 7th - that does rather surprise me, to be honest!

Surprise surprise the UK is an absolute disaster. Even the USA is ahead for some. I suppose half the kids in te UK arn't really from the UK anyway.

Aye, shame really - if all of the kids were foreigners we'd be top of the charts.

That goes both ways, some swedish professorguy or some such said that if they'd only count native swedish peoples results instead of including those with immigrant background (parents is enough, further than that doesn't count apparently) they'd raise far far higher than they're now.

What? http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...es/unsure1.gif Why would it even matter if they're going through the same education?

IIRC it's been proven that it in fact does matter on larger scale at least, individuals are a different matter of course. if you put aside the genetic differences which can vary from person to person regardless of where they're from, if you're an immigrant you might not adjust to your new country as well as natives do, you could have, even if only small, language barrier etc which can have negative impact on what you learn from the same education, your culture at home, even if you're born in the "new country", might have impact on how you learn etc etc.

Exactly what I was thinking lol.

They can barely speak the language for a start. They aren't bothered about learning because they're quite happy to sponge off the government their entire lives. Those are two main reasons. I know this doesn't account for everyone by any means, but the small proportion who come into the country as kids or are born here and grow up to be doctors is slim.

Speaking from first hand interaction with Asian children/families all throughout my schooling, regardless if they were born in UK, there is a definite difference in culture with regards to education, failing exams is to bring shame on yourself and embarrassment for your parents.

Fair enough for those that were not that clever, but they did put some effort into it.

Majority I knew were born here, spoke perfect English AND a second language.

This is generally what I have been seeing in other areas too, also a lot of the people that are immigrants always fight an uphill battle, so many of them learn at a young age that they have to put more work into it.

lol Kaotika, your first pic found itself to Phun.org [rofl]

They're not my pics originally, I'm just re-hosting them since the place I got 'em from has pornographic material on the site too, so didn't want to link 'em from there (it's one of the sites that gather random pics automaticly from irc links)

I was also taught to reduce as much as possible before you solve.

You should reduce the 48/2 before multiplication [rofl]

Many calculators not following math rules?
 

And it's a damn simple equation too:
48 / 2 ( 9 + 3 )

Basic math rules say that you first calculate things within parenthesis (if there's more than one, you start from possible parenthesis inside another parenthesis etc), multiplying and dividing are equal and done in order from left to right.
Also since there's parenthesis next to number without anything between them, they're multiplied.

So the above equation goes like this:

48 / 2 ( 9 + 3 ) =
48 / 2 ( 12 ) =
24 ( 12 ) =
24 * 12 =
288

However, some calculators count it like this:

48 / 2 ( 9 + 3 ) =
48 / 2 ( 12 ) =
48 / 24 =
2

Strangely enough, some people are quite convinced the latter way should be correct, and not the former.

Here's wolfram alphas take on it:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=48/2(9%2B3)

And examples where calculators fail or do it right:
http://home.akku.tv/~akku38901/Math/1.jpg

http://home.akku.tv/~akku38901/Math/2.jpg

http://home.akku.tv/~akku38901/Math/3.jpg

The correct answer, according to a friend of mine with a degree in Math, is 2.

48/(2*(9+3))
= 2

You've changed the original expression. 48/(2*(9+3)) is not the same as 48 / 2 ( 9 + 3 ). The former essentially says "Divide 48 by 2 and then multiply this by the sum of 9 and 3". Your expression reads "Divide 48 by the multiplication of 2 by the sum of 9 and 3".

Edit: Oh and yes, Kaotika, it's a complete mess when it comes to the world of calculators. If you think the variation in the handling of parentheses and implied operations is bad enough, it's relatively minor compared to long-standing stupidity of labelling arcsin, arccos, arctan as sin-1, cos-1, etc. The latest craze is for calculators to completely ignore negative signs (and I mean negative signs, not minus/subtraction signs) in front of numbers when raising them to a power, unless the value is enclosed in parentheses before applying the power.

The correct answer should be 2 seeing as how you put the 9 and 3 in parentheses. Using order of operations, Parentheses Exponents Multiplication Division Addition Subtraction (PEMDAS)? The calculator added the 9 and 3 in parentheses and then multiplied the 2 times 12 and divided 48 by 24 according to the correct order of operations, no?

Either way, I always make sure to put parentheses either way when it comes to problems like these.

The problem with some of them is solving as the user is inputing the data and so not obeying the standard order

the microsoft calculator for example doesnt process the operand after an operator is inputed at the start, it seems to expect a much simpler equation with just a single operator for 2 operands. so the display actually reads

48 / ( 9 + 3) instead of 48 / 2 ( 9 + 3) for solving

so its best to solve the parenthesis first before inputing 48 / 2 x 12 further simplified 24 x12. defeats the purpose of a calculator i know

its always best to test your calculator beforehand. One with a buffer to hold the equation before the user actually presses to solve is required for the standardised order

PEDMAS, BODMAS, BIDMAS or whatever you want to call isn't a mathematical axiom. It's a handy guide for remembering things but it shouldn't be treated as being a definitive rule. The correct way to do this is to sort out any operations in parentheses first (i.e. the 9 + 3) and then go back and read the expression left to right, where multiplication and division are done before addition/subtraction.

Thus the correct answer in Kaotika's original expression is 288 and not 2:

48 / 2 ( 9 + 3 ) = 48 ÷ 2 x 12 = 24 x 12 = 288

The answer is only 2 if the expression is specifically written like this:

48 / ( 2 ( 9 + 3 ) ) = 48 ÷ ( 2 x 12 ) = 48 ÷ 24 = 2

Slapping parentheses about can easily change an expression from its intended form.

Exactly. Any definitive rule should be plainly stated to just simplify the expression which obviously enough is where the parenthesis priority comes from