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PEMDAS is technically correct, but morally wrong (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by Chainweasel@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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If we're supposed to be able to understand math as easily as a language, we should be able to read it from left to right like a language.
Yes, I know there's lots other languages that go right to left or top to bottom, but the point is you don't have to go jumping around the page or sentence figuring out which word should be read first based on which characters it contains.
We put the first word first, then the second word second, etc.
Why can't we just write equations in the order they were meant to be solved?

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[-] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

You can if you wrote everything as just addition and subtraction, but then we made some shorthand notations for that, such as 2x3=2+2+2, and so now you have to do multiplication before addition otherwise you get a wrong answer, and if you wrote all multiplications before all additions there'd still be no problem, but as someone else pointed out, there are cases where it's easier to have a different order, and so voila! Order of operations rules.

this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
-37 points (21.5% liked)

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