Why is my == not working in the solution

The code has 5 main checks in order: - line 21 checks if n1 is greater than n2 - line 32 checks if n2 is greater than n1 - line 43 checks if n3 is less than n1 - line 48 checks if n1 equals n2 OR n2 equal n3 - line 52 checks if n1 equals n3 A couple things to consider: 'If-if else' structures will process in order until the first one returns true. They don't skip to the 'if' statement that is the most true, or keep checking for all that are true. When comparing numbers there are always 3 possible results: Either the first number is greater than the second number, OR the first number is less than the second number, OR the two numbers are equal. Your code problems lie in those 2 points. Because lines 21, 32, and 43 are before lines 48 and 52; anytime you enter 2 numbers that are the same one of the earlier if checks will catch it. That means if you entered 4 3 3 then line 21 will be true because n1(4) is greater than n2(3) but then none of the other checks are true in that block because the code does not check for equality. The same thing happens when entering 3 4 3, line 32 would be true instead because n2(4) is greater than n1(3), but that block of code also does not check for equality. If you followed the code when entering 3 3 4 you will see that the first line to be true would be 48 and midNum gets set to n2, which will be correct. However if you entered 3 3 2 then line 39 would be true and midNum would not be set as no equality check is done. To fix your code you could either check for equality in the blocks 21, 32, and 43. This would mean adding another 10 or so lines of code. Alternatively, because those blocks already assume that none of the numbers are equal, just move the equality checks to the beginning of the if-else if structure. This just means moving the code between lines 48-54 to the front of the 'if-else if' with no additional lines of code. You could actually remove lines 43-47 in this case.