why in algebra class they teach the order of operations (PEMDAS) in that order. Is this just an arbitrary standard everyone agreed on or was it the result of higher math only making sense when equations are done in that order?

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In: 1362

Answer 1

It’s a purely arbitrary standard. Because we all agree on the order of operations, we can omit parentheses and still unambiguously write complicated equations.

If there was no standard, we could still communicate about math, but there would be substantially more parentheses involved.