Exactly. This whole thing seems extremely artificial to me; notation is fluid and ambiguous, despite what elementary-school teachers may say. If you're calculat

Exactly. This whole thing seems extremely artificial to me; notation is fluid and ambiguous, despite what elementary-school teachers may say. If you're calculating something, you can use whatever rules you want, and if you're reading some else's work, you can complain if they're being ambiguous. My intuitions (astrophysics/finance background) say multiplication-by-juxtaposition is higher-precedence than multiplication-by-symbol, so "x/y(1+y)" would be "x/(y(1+y))"; interpreting it as "(x/y)(1+y)" seems wrong. Then again, "x/y*(1+y)" already looks wrong. The solidus is too powerful. I'd write "(x/y)(1+y)" explicitly.