• PEMDAS isn’t obvious to “common people”? Why not? It doesn’t seem like an arbitrary convention to me…

    If “×” means “groups of,” then “2+2×4” means “two plus two groups of four” which only makes sense, to me, to be read as “two plus two groups of four” rather than “two plus two groups of four”

    Sure the order of operations could be arbitrarily different, but I feel like we settled on that order because it simply makes more sense intuitively.

    I’m aware of the possibility that it only feels natural and intuitive to me because I was taught that way, but I at least don’t think that applies to this specific example

    • PEMDAS isn’t obvious to “common people”?

      Everyone is taught the rules of Maths

      If “×” means “groups of,”

      It means repeated addition actually

      “2+2×4” means “two plus two groups of four”

      No, it means 2+2+2+2+2

      Sure the order of operations could be arbitrarily different

      No they can’t

      I feel like we settled on that order because it simply makes more sense intuitively

      It’s because Multiplication is defined as repeated addition, so if you don’t do it before addition you get wrong answers

    • lauha@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      PEMDAS isn’t obvious to “common people”? Why not?

      Clearly not if most of these answers are incorrect. If it was obvious, there wouldn’t be as many answers as there are.