this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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~~Yeah but the way you derive the order of operations is way above the average maths student.~~
~~I say that, but its not really that complicated to derive, since you think in terms of the expansion of the naturals to the reals~~
My brain is fucking dumb
Im sorry, what? The order of operations is completely arbitrary, it just also happens to be the standart. Not having PEMDAS would simply mean we have to write equations differently. PEMDAS et al only exist to avoid ambiguity as in this image.
Yeah looking at my comment with fresh eyes, I really failed to say anything true.
But I'm still going to say its not arbitary, since its super fucking convinent and it removes a lot of brackets.
By that reasoning, sure, it is not arbitrary, it might be the most efficient way to resolve things without complicating the notation we have to use. The point about it being arbitrary was more to say that there is no real mathematic basis for it, we have simply agreed to do it this way so everyone applyingnit arrives at the same “correct” solution.
Arguably it has little value in algebra too, since it tends to be written less ambiguously, tho I have not had to really use algebra much since highschool (weirdly it was not a huge part of medschool, at least here, occasional use in chem and phys only).
If pemdas is above the average math student that's fucked. I learned it in 5th grade.