09 April 2023

Problem

Found this on Facebook and, apparently, got it wrong.

48÷8(14-8)

Never mind that the notation is jacked.

I PEMDAS'd it and got...


Thinking that M gets done before D...

48/8*(14-8)

48/8*6

48/48

1

But, according to spreadsheets and other comments it's.

48/8*(14-8)

48/8*6

6*6

36

This, apparently, is because the PE, MD and AS are grouped and go left to right.

This kind of confusion only happens when I get math in the abstract and never with a practical question.

Posted by Angus McThag at 05:03
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous09 April, 2023 21:03

    I like what you say there "never with a practical question". I wrote code for a (large) number of years, and the order of operations is something everyone carefully studied, but I always overused parentheses so that someone debugging the code would know not simply the calculations the way they were addressed by the code, but also the _intent_ - programmers make mistakes.
    -Don R.

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