Editing Openai/68a11068-3fe8-8007-bd18-674462ff2b41 (section)

=== Assistant: I get why you’re frustrated — it feels like I’m “messing up” the math rules, but it’s not really that I don’t know them. ===
I get why you’re frustrated — it feels like I’m “messing up” the math rules, but it’s not really that I don’t know them. The issue is notation ambiguity.

Math itself is consistent, but humans often write things in ways that can mean more than one thing. For example:
* 50/2(1+4)50/2(1+4)50/2(1+4) - If you follow the calculator / programming convention (division and multiplication equal, left to right) → 125. - If you follow the algebra classroom convention (implicit multiplication stronger) → 5.

Both are defensible, but which one’s “right” depends on context. ChatGPT sometimes tries to guess your intended convention instead of forcing parentheses, and that can look “dumb.”

What’s actually happening:
* I’m not solving wrong math; I’m trying to resolve ambiguous human notation.
* When you add parentheses, like 502(1+4)\tfrac{50}{2(1+4)}2(1+4)50 vs. (50/2)(1+4)(50/2)(1+4)(50/2)(1+4), there’s no room for error.

👉 So the short answer: I’m not bad at math — I’m bad at mind-reading ambiguous notation 😅

Would it help if I gave you a set of writing rules (like “always put parentheses here”) so you never run into these traps again?