Eli5, people are saying that pemdas is absolute and that 1000 / 5(4-2) = m could be either 100 or 400 because the variable m isn’t defined. Could you all elaborate on what that means?

Question

Eli5, people are saying that pemdas is absolute and that 1000 / 5(4-2) = m could be either 100 or 400 because the variable m isn’t defined. Could you all elaborate on what that means?

In: 0

Answer 1

These people failed third grade math. In this, 1000/5(2) is what you get after the first step. From there, multiplication and division are on the same plane, so to speak, and you do them left-to-right. So the answer *is* 400.

Either way, nobody writes equations like this to solve any real-world problems. 1000/5 would be expressed as a fraction, and the correct solution would be obvious