Mathematicians, physicists, and Popular Mechanics editors argue about how to solve the ambiguous math problem that has gone viral.

One short math problem set the internet ablaze this weekend—and incited charged arguments on math teacher Twitter, too.

Viral math equations have been known to divide people on the internet. Some problems are so mind-bogglingly hard that they seem impossible, even if they're meant for elementary school students.

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.

Teachers should steer students away from the popular "Dear Aunt Sally" (PEMDAS) order of operations acronym, says math coach David Ginsburg.

As youngsters, math students are drilled in a particular convention for the “order of operations,” which dictates the order thus: parentheses, exponents, multiplication and division (to be ...