Math is not a democracy

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The annoying prevalence of this meme suggests to me that an alarming number of people lack even a middle-school understanding of basic arithmetic.
- Wait until you hear what the average reading level is.
- It's not arithmetic at all, it's just about convention aka how to communicate math. The author didn't make themselves clear enough so people misunderstand what calculation they mean.
  
  In mathematics and computer programming, the order of operations is a collection of conventions about which arithmetic operations to perform first in order to evaluate a given mathematical expression.
  The order of operations is part of arithmetic. Although, the memes about it are certainly not good mathematics communication.
  
  There's a useful distinction to be made. The order of operations is different between conventional written maths, calculators, reverse polish notation, python, etc. In contrast there is no disagreement over what the result of any individual binary operations is
  
  The order of operations is different between conventional written maths, calculators, reverse polish notation, python, etc.
  The notation might be different, but the rules are universal
  
  The rules are about how you interpret the notation, so that makes no sense.
  
  The rules are about how you interpret the notation
  No, the notation definitions are about how to interpret the notation. The rules are about how to do the Maths.
  
  So if you have one "notation definition" as you call it which says that 2+2*3 means ”first add two to two, then multiply by three" and another which says "first multiply two by three, then add it to two", why on earth do the "rules" have anything further to say about order of operations?
  
  it’s just about convention aka how to communicate math
  They're rules actually.
  The author didn’t make themselves clear enough
  Yes they did, someone screwed up the answers, just like in this book...
  
  misunderstand what calculation they mean
  There's only 1 possible answer to it.

126 comments