https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations

The acronym PEMDAS, which stands for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication/Division, Addition/Subtraction,[22] is common in the United States[23] and France.[24] Sometimes the letters are expanded into words of a mnemonic sentence such as “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally”.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    8 days ago

    Right around here, in like 7th or 8th grade when they start teaching algebra instead of just arithmetic, is where math class goes wrong.

    They teach the class as if every student is going to be a mathematician and fill chalkboards with a bunch of greek letters to prove that E = MChammer or whatever the hell they actually do. They expect tweenagers to take on board six or seven phrases like the Transitive Property of Equality, learn the definitions of them, and then remember which definition goes to which bullshit made up to look smart phrase that definition went with.

    The result? Arguments on the internet over the simplification of syntactically ambiguous polynomials, because teaching it as PEMDAS kind of misses the point.

    I use order of operations all the time in my day to day life; for example, right now on my workbench is a drawer box waiting for the glue to dry. It’s 10 7/8" wide. The sides are 5/8" thick. The back is set into a 1/4" deep dado on each side. The length of the back board is overall_width - 2 * (side_thickness - dado_depth). The back board is 10 1/8" long. That’s how I programmed my CAD software to create it

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      This, right here, is why high school ought to still have classes like shop and home ec – and not just for the “technical track” kids who aren’t planning on going to college.

  • palordrolap@fedia.io
    12·
    8 days ago

    PEMDAS/BODMAS/[your local variant here] is an important part of the grammar of a language that is surprisingly common and it may be useful to be able to communicate using it some day.

    This applies to more orthodox languages as well. You can often get by just fine and live your entire life without knowing any of the minority languages in your country, but there may be occasions where it would be really useful to be able to communicate with someone in one of them.