Numberphile revived an ancient multiplication trick—halves and doubles—also called Egyptian or Russian math, where you ...

This summer, battle lines were drawn over a simple math problem: 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2) = ? If you divide 8 by 2 first, you get 16, but if you multiply 2 by (2 + 2) first, you get 1. So, which answer is right?

A TikTok video of a novel, ancient multiplication method has gone viral. While the user, jesslouisec, calls the method Japanese multiplication and some mathematicians say it’s “Vedic multiplying,” its ...