I know some places use BIDMAS as well. Overall though, to someone who knows little about mathematics, why is this the correct order? What’s the exact logic behind it
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The “correct order” is one which we all agree on. Parentheses coming first makes a lot of sense, since their whole purpose is to establish the ordering of things. Pairing multiplication and division next to one another makes things a lot easier, since they are effectively the same thing and it is often easier to do them all at once. The same with addition and subtraction.
First of all, it’s a convention. It’s only correct because people agreed on it. The point is to make sure that whenever people write a mathematical formula, it will always be read the same way. It would work just as well if we used “PASMDE”, we would just have to put some parenthesis differently to get the same expressions.
As to why this specific order was chosen, it simply makes writing certain expressions easier. Parenthesis always come first because that’s their entire purpose – to change the order of operations. The rest are ordered by magnitude – the “strongest” operations first, followed by the “weaker” operations.
This is useful because we like to group expressions by the strongest operations. Specifically, PEMDAS allows us to write polynomials such as 5x^7 + 4x^4 – 2xy^2 – 7y + 5 without any parentheses. A different order of ope
PEMDAS and BIDMAS (and BODMAS and PEDMAS) are all the same – just using different letters/words to describe the same order of operations.
It’s not the only system, but it is one that allows for a fairly efficient way to convey the order of operations to get the correct answer that’s also fairly intuitive for many people.
There doesn’t need to be any logic behind it, and there’s nothing that makes it the “correct” order.
The only thing that matters is that *we all use the same order*. The order could be absolutely anything; it doesn’t matter. As long as everyone is using the same order, then everyone will come to the same answer for the same question.
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The “correct order” is one which we all agree on. Parentheses coming first makes a lot of sense, since their whole purpose is to establish the ordering of things. Pairing multiplication and division next to one another makes things a lot easier, since they are effectively the same thing and it is often easier to do them all at once. The same with addition and subtraction.
The “correct order” is one which we all agree on. Parentheses coming first makes a lot of sense, since their whole purpose is to establish the ordering of things. Pairing multiplication and division next to one another makes things a lot easier, since they are effectively the same thing and it is often easier to do them all at once. The same with addition and subtraction.
First of all, it’s a convention. It’s only correct because people agreed on it. The point is to make sure that whenever people write a mathematical formula, it will always be read the same way. It would work just as well if we used “PASMDE”, we would just have to put some parenthesis differently to get the same expressions.
As to why this specific order was chosen, it simply makes writing certain expressions easier. Parenthesis always come first because that’s their entire purpose – to change the order of operations. The rest are ordered by magnitude – the “strongest” operations first, followed by the “weaker” operations.
This is useful because we like to group expressions by the strongest operations. Specifically, PEMDAS allows us to write polynomials such as 5x^7 + 4x^4 – 2xy^2 – 7y + 5 without any parentheses. A different order of ope
It is a convention that, if followed, mathematical expressions can be written in a certain way without ambiguity. There could well be other conventions but this would require the expressions to be written differently. It just happens that for most mathematics, the agreed upon convention is PEMDAS or BODMAS (just different names for the same thing).
We follow conventions all the time especially in languages. They’re mostly the product of some logic and some tradition and, as long as they’re agreed upon, they make life simpler.
One could try to speak like Yoda, “the egg, red is” and more or less be comprehensible but, for most, the conventional “the egg is red” sounds more natural and more easily comprehended.
Mathematics is somewhat more precise and unforgiving because expressions can get fairly long. So without a convention, they add to errors and ambiguities.
So if someone writes 3 * x + 5, the convention is that multiply x by three then add 5. If we reversed the priority 3 * x + 5 becomes add five to x then multiply the sum by 3. Both conventions are workable if used consistently but if the order is interchangeable arbitrarily, math would be more confusing.
First of all, it’s a convention. It’s only correct because people agreed on it. The point is to make sure that whenever people write a mathematical formula, it will always be read the same way. It would work just as well if we used “PASMDE”, we would just have to put some parenthesis differently to get the same expressions.
As to why this specific order was chosen, it simply makes writing certain expressions easier. Parenthesis always come first because that’s their entire purpose – to change the order of operations. The rest are ordered by magnitude – the “strongest” operations first, followed by the “weaker” operations.
This is useful because we like to group expressions by the strongest operations. Specifically, PEMDAS allows us to write polynomials such as 5x^7 + 4x^4 – 2xy^2 – 7y + 5 without any parentheses. A different order of ope
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