like how does it make sense? why is it correct compared to just solving equations left to right? what are some scenarios that prove PEMDAS to be the absolute truth and necessity? @_@
In: Mathematics
Its like asking why is reading left to right the absolute truth instead of reading right to left or top to bottom. It isn’t, it was chosen arbitrarily, and it doesn’t matter what convention we chose, just that everyone agrees on it so that we all get the same answer when we solve the same equation. If we had chosen a different convention, we would write the same equations differently, with parenthesis in different places. Just like how if we read right to left, we would write the same words differently.
For example if I have y = 5 * x + 2 under PEMDAS, and I wanted to instead use a convention where + happens before *, I would instead write that as y = (5 * x) + 2, to keep the same meaning.
Parenthesis do have to go first tho because the meaning of the parenthesis character is “do this first” like that’s it’s meaning as a symbol.
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