"The incessant need to be correct is not a virtue."
There is no field that surfing’s renaissance man Kelly Slater doesn’t expert. He’s smarter than most doctors, wiser than historically inaccurate trolls what with his Chinese girlfriend bonafides, a master of math, or maths if the reader finds him(her)self Australian. Yes, the Pipe Masters is currently rounding into its final heat but who cares?
Not me.
I care about the equation 60 ÷ 5 (7 – 4) =
It just so happened to appear on The Tinder Blog, a meme account, with the caption “What’s the answer?? We beefing hard about this in group chat.”
As it also just so happens, I am a pre-K through 5th grade math(s) teacher having accepted the role of “Senior Math(s) Faculty” for a private school consisting of my child and my friends’ children. I failed abysmally at the subject through my own education and figured I could right wrongs.
In any case, Slater jumped straight into the comments with a searing comment, penning, “Amazing confidence in wrong answers here, even from math teachers. It’s 4. But I suppose younger people learning common core math might be confused. Gotta handle the parenthesis first and that includes multiplication before division.”
Shockingly, the GOAT was wrong.
I worked the equation and came up with 144 though that may be wrong too.
In any other case, many came in and pointed out the 24 ÷ 2 World Surf League Champion’s fault and did he take it?
No.
He spent multiple hours arguing his case before, at the end, rolling over with a banger, declaring, “The incessant need to be correct is not a virtue. Get some rest, take the W, and have a little fun with the mistakes in life.”
Slater, wrongly, adding a comma before the “and have a little fun with the mistakes in life.”
Does he strike you as someone who heeds that poignant advice?
But what is the answer?
Gotta teach tomorrow.