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Math is not a democracy (europe.pub)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 20 points 10 months ago* (53 children)

The annoying prevalence of this meme suggests to me that an alarming number of people lack even a middle-school understanding of basic arithmetic.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (51 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago* (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    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

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (4 children)

    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

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    The rules are about how you interpret the notation, so that makes no sense.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    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?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    and another which says “first multiply two by three, then add it to two”

    No we don't. We have another notation which says to do paired operations (equivalent to being in brackets) first.

    why on earth do the “rules” have anything further to say about order of operations?

    Because if you don't obey them you get wrong answers 🙄

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