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?

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Answer 1

If you can’t tell what the order of operations is supposed to be, the equation is improperly formatted.

All these meme equations trying to obfuscate the correct order with weird application of parentheses and “/“ symbols are poorly structured specifically to confuse.

Don’t overthink it.