What is 2x+6=10? The maths equation scrambling everyone’s brains right now

The internet is trying to work out 2x+6=10 but failing, hard. Sometimes I wonder if I ever listened in maths at school, because my brain hurts just looking at this.

Everyone has started trying to work out the sum, after it began circulating on Twitter. The tweet now has a huge 50million impressions, and 30k people are in the comments arguing that the answer in front of them is definitely wrong. Chaos!

Over 7k people have bookmarked the tweet, so are obviously waiting to come back to the sum when they can face doing it – but 2x+6=10 is all over Twitter right now, and I need an answer! Here’s a step by step guide to working it out – yes I actually spent my afternoon doing this – and spoiler alert: The answer on Twitter very much isn’t it.

What is 2x+6=10?

Whilst the version on Twitter shows its working, and looks pretty logical – it’s simply not correct. Step by step, it gets a bit lost, so here’s what you need to do to complete the question correctly.

• Subtract six from both sides. So remember in maths when you’d take numbers over the = and they’d switch from negative to positive or the other way around? That’s the first step here, take the six over, so it’s minus on the other side.
• You then simplify, by doing the 10-6 sum you’re now left with on the right-hand side, meaning you have 2x = 4.
• It’s now pretty easy to work out – you take the two over, so it now divides and doesn’t multiply as it does currently, and you have x = 4/2
• So, x=2
• Quick maths!

Now, I’d like to return to never doing maths ever again. Thanks!

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