This handwritten 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 Sandra’s clever answer about her age is tricking a surprising number of adults today.
The image asks you to solve: 80 – 40 ÷ 10 × 4.
What makes this puzzle so tricky is remembering the exact rules for the order of operations. Many people will accidentally multiply the 10 and 4 first to get 40, then divide 40 by 40 to get 1, and subtract that from 80 to confidently guess that Sandra is 79 years old!
To get the right answer, you have to remember the golden rule of math: multiplication and division must be completed before addition and subtraction, but they carry the exact same weight, meaning they must be solved from left to right.
So, your very first step is to tackle the division section on the left. 40 ÷ 10 gives you 4.
When you drop that 4 back into the problem, the equation becomes: 80 – 4 × 4.
Next, you do the multiplication. 4 × 4 gives you 16.
Finally, you just drop that 16 back in for a very simple subtraction problem: 80 – 16. Just solve that last step to find Sandra’s true age!
Answer: 64.
