Instagram Is Stepping Up To Solve This Wendy's Math Challenge

You might think Wendy's has social media posts down to a science, but apparently, it's actually math. The home of the Breakfast Baconator sent some brains to spinning recently, thanks to a pretty atypical Instagram post for a fast food joint. So if you always wanted a little light mathematics to go with your social media and chili-covered baked potato, Wendy's had your back that day.

The post asked a fairly simple question: "How much is a breakfast biscuit at Wendy's?" The tricky part, though, followed in the form of a math equation: 8÷2(2+2)÷16 Dollars. Immediately after, everyone's favorite redhead-led company commented with, "just here to start arguments tbh." As everyone knows, there's nothing like a good old-fashioned heated debate to really make something take off. 

 In the few days since it went up, the post has nearly 13,000 likes and many, many comments. Some offered answers, and at least one person decided to troll Wendy's for a change by posting, "1/16? So $0.07 (rounded up)? Deal!" Others seemed to answer with that same fraction in earnest. Wondering what the answer is? PEMDAS can help you.

It's been a minute since some – maybe most – of us have learned and applied the whole "order of operations" rules of mathematics. So unsurprisingly, some people solved parts the different parts of the problem in the incorrect order on the first go. At least one person commented with a guess of $16. Some thought the biscuit cost 6 cents after trying to divide $ 1 by $16, and one person came up with $2. 

A couple of commenters pointed out that the key to solving the expression is PEMDAS, or as one person put it, "PLEASE EXCUSE MY DEAD AUNT SALLY." (Another commenter noted that it's "Dear Aunt" not "Dead Aunt.") PEMDAS is an acronym that's used to teach order of operations. So, a big long equation like the one Wendy's posed has to be solved bit by bit in the correct order. Per SplashLearn, solve expressions in this order: Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, Addition and Subtraction.

The answer is: "*leans in close to the mic* 'One dollar, Bob,'" said lalathecurly. Thankfully, it's not $16 because these breakfast biscuits, although yummy, aren't made out of gold. Although there are probably some disappointed customers out there who thought they would skate away with biscuits much cheaper than $1.