This stacked math equation has been causing a massive debate on social media! It looks exactly like a problem you would have easily solved in grade school, but the vertical layout is tricking a surprising number of adults today.
The image asks you to solve: 25 + 5 × 0 + 5.
What makes this puzzle so tricky is our natural instinct to read and calculate straight from top to bottom. If you do that, you might add 25 and 5 to get 30, then multiply by 0 to get 0, and add the final 5 to end up with 5. That is the most common trap!
To get the right answer, you have to remember the golden rule of math: the order of operations. This rule states that multiplication and division must always be completed before addition and subtraction, regardless of how the problem is formatted.
So, your very first step is to tackle the multiplication section in the middle of the stack. 5 × 0 simply gives you 0.
When you drop that zero back into the problem, the equation becomes incredibly easy: 25 + 0 + 5.
Now you can just add those remaining numbers together to find your final solution.
Answer: 30.
