• Pipoca@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    It’s BE(D=M)(A=S). Different places have slightly different acronyms - B for bracket vs P for parenthesis, for example.

    But multiplication and division are whichever comes first right to left in the expression, and likewise with subtraction.

    Although implicit multiplication is often treated as binding tighter than explicit. 1/2x is usually interpreted as 1/(2x), not (1/2)x.

    • CheesyFox@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      a fair point, but aren’t division and subtraction are non-communicative, hence both operands need to be evaluated first?

    • unoriginalsin@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It’s BE(D=M)(A=S). Different places have slightly different acronyms - B for bracket vs P for parenthesis, for example.

      But, since your rule has the D&M as well as the A&S in brackets does that mean your rule means you have to do D&M as well as the A&S in the formula before you do the exponents that are not in brackets?

      But seriously. Only grade school arithmetic textbooks have formulas written in this ambiguous manner. Real mathematicians write their formulas clearly so that there isn’t any ambiguity.

      • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        That’s not really true.

        You’ll regularly see textbooks where 3x/2y is written to mean 3x/(2y) rather than (3x/2)*y because they don’t want to format

        3x
        ----
        2y
        

        properly because that’s a terrible waste of space in many contexts.

              • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Grade school is a US synonym for primary or elementary school; it doesn’t seem to be used as a term in England or Australia. Apparently, they’re often K-6 or K-8; my elementary school was K-4; some places have a middle school or junior high between grade school and high school.