ok seriously, its not 288. ive been in school for engineering for 3.5 years and have been through several advanced math classes. According to pemdas (parenthesis, exponents, multiply, divide, add, subtract) thats the order in which you are supposed to do the math. so there for you start with whats in the parenthesis which is (9+3) which equals 12. now you have 48/2(12), a number outside of parenthesis without anything in between means that you multiply so that is 2(12) which is 24. you are left with 48/24 which is 2. BTW to those who used a calculator, they are not always correct ask any teacher or professor. there are several operations that they are not able to do.