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While its basic math you would be surprised at how many people have forgotten about PEMDAS. I would argue that the additive way comes more naturally to people.
by me551ah 6y ago
While its basic math you would be surprised at how many people have forgotten about PEMDAS. I would argue that the additive way comes more naturally to people. For people wanting to more complex equations scientific one does follow PEMDAS.
- munchbunny 6y agoI think it's just a matter of people adapting to the tools that are easily available. Almost 100% of the time I've seen someone use an actual basic tabletop calculator, they've been tallying prices and slapping on a sales tax. At that point it's just a learned ritual and they're not thinking about order of operations. If they needed parentheses, they'd just memorize that the parentheses go around the prices. Once the computations get complex enough that you have to write down the formulas, then it makes a lot of sense to treat the computations as algebraic expressions, meaning PEMDAS.
- zokier 6y agoPersonally I've always found relying on operator precedence uncomfortable and usually add always parenthesis even when they are not strictly needed, this was the case even back in high school when we were doing calculations with then fancy graphing calculators. I just find the extra degree of confidence worth the slight extra effort and noise. Maybe I'm just a belt and suspenders type of guy. These days for actual physical calculators, and on phone, I've transitioned to RPN which neatly transcends such petty ambiguity problems.