this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Sadly, this is actually true, people actually don't know simple math and operation order.
And they ask me why I hold such low expectations for the future 🤦.
To be fair, it’s completely arbitrary, and all of math would be easier to understand, although slightly more verbose, if the only rule of order of operations is “always use parentheses to denote order, there are no implied parentheses”.
lazy mfs from centuries ago who were mortified by the thought of having to write
(and)too much (lord what i wouldn’t give to hop in a time machine and show them lisp) should not be dictating our mathematical notation in this century. Explicit grouping is always more obvious to the reader.To be clear, it's the standard order of operations (PEMDAS) that is arbitrary. The expression in the post, assuming PEMDAS, is not arbitrary. There's only one correct answer.
Also, I dunno man. The window from where math is complicated enough to have multiple different operators to where expressions get too complicated to be easily readable with just parentheses to denote order should be passed by like, early to mid highschool, if not junior high. Point being, frankly if you're struggling with PEMDAS, your either still a high schooler, or you probably should be.
Or we can all learn polish notation
It's not arbitrary just because you don't understand the how and why of it. The expression could certainly be written more clearly, but that's an entirely separate matter.
Um, I think we're agreeing. The expression is not arbitrary, it only has one correct answer. We agree on that. I'm saying that using PEMDAS is an arbitrary convention. If we all agreed to rewrite our equations in PEASMD, it would be ugly, you'd probably need more parentheses, but it would still work. People in this thread have used set theory to explain that PEMDAS makes more sense, and it totally does, but it doesn't strictly have to be that way.
I'm actually finding two different definitions of arbitrary on the Internet: 1. Based on individual discretion, 2. Random. I had the first in mind.