Hints and solutions to
Problem of the day for Wednesday, May 27

If we define the operation x # y by the equation

then find (3 # 48) # 9.

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• Here we go -- just follow the directions (and the parentheses)!
• Because of the parentheses, we have to compute 3 # 48 first, and 3 # 48 is the square root of 3 x 48, which is the square root of 144, which is 12.
• To get the final answer then, we have to calculate 12 # 9. And 12 # 9 is the square root of 12 x 9, in other words the square root of 108. So the answer to this problem is the square root of 108.

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