Twitter loves a good puzzle, so it comes as no surprise to see this one going viral. A Twitter user recently shared a seemingly simple math equation with the answer already provided, and asked netizens to make sense of it.
"A maths meme that is actually funny rather than stupid," wrote KJ Cheetham, asking people to solve "230 - 220 x 0.5".
The catch here is that according to him, the answer to the equation is 5!
The equation has collected over 29,000 'retweets' and twice as many 'likes' since it was shared online.
Many who tried solving the puzzle were left scratching their head. Using school-level math, after all, led to the conclusion that the answer should be 120. So how did "5" enter the equation? The answer to that lies in the overlooked exclamation mark after the 5.
The exclamation mark used after five is actually a symbol for factorial. In mathematics, factorial is denoted by 'n!' and it is the product of all positive integers less than or equal to 'n'.
In this case, it means that "5!" is actually "5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1", and the answer is 120.
Were you able to make sense of the equation? Let us know using the comments section.
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