Trigonometry I'll never use that.

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Wafer

Veteran
Mmm, not sure "easier" is that good a description if you can get different answers

No, if brackets are used correctly it's easy, you process them first. Only if brackets aren't used is there a risk.

You can say I was taught wrong if you want, it's what I and the people I was at school with were taught in maths lessons. So guess what will happen if you rely on bodmas for calculations when people have been taught differently...
 

Profpointy

Legendary Member
No, if brackets are used correctly it's easy, you process them first. Only if brackets aren't used is there a risk.

You can say I was taught wrong if you want, it's what I and the people I was at school with were taught in maths lessons. So guess what will happen if you rely on bodmas for calculations when people have been taught differently...

If I may use an analogy if someone was taught that Poland was in Africa, it would simply be wrong. You wouldn't teach writers to say Poland Europe to avoid mistakes
 

Profpointy

Legendary Member
BODMAS is a set of rules, a set different to the rules I was taught. It's not a fact.

Maybe it's a definition rather than a fact.

If you were taught different rules, it would be akin to being taught that 5x3 = 8 and 5+3 = 15
This would is a different sent of rules for arithmetic, which you could build a system out of, but not exactly helpful
 
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nickyboy

Norven Mankey
I watched a TV show a couple of years ago. Celebs in some Arctic land or other. One "test" they had to do was to calculate the answer to some maths problem like 5+4x6-3=?

They all just calculated it L to R, gave 51 as the answer, and were told they were correct and had passed the challenge. I got told off by Mrs N for being a pedantic maths nobber and taking a reality TV show a tad too seriously
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Maybe it's a definition rather than a fact.

If you were taught different rules, it would be akin to being taught that 5x3 = 8 and 5+3 = 15
This would is a different sent of rules for arithmetic, which you could build a system out of, but not exactly helpful

BODMAS is a convention.

Things like addition is associative, and also commutative, are axioms (or equivalent axioms) of Peano Arithmetic.

Most human beings don't have any problems with seeing that in what we loosely call arithmetic, subtraction 'is' left associative.

Not sure where your fear of brackets and equivalent of being a grammar nazi came from. You need to drag those semigroup lecture notes out and stop having a whinge at other people!
 
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Firestorm

Veteran
Location
Southend on Sea
Oliver Had
A Handful
Of Apples

was how I learned that.

What I really want to know was why did I get caned for stealing apples when it was Oliver all along:cry:
Due to mixing with a rather odd group , we remember it as
Two Orange Aliens
Carrying A Handbag
Sit On Hedges

bloody weird but its stuck for 44 years

As for colours of the spectrum
Richard of York gained Belfast in Vomit

Said we were weird
 

Profpointy

Legendary Member
Multiplication and addition are a little more fundamental than BODMAS.....
It's not like there is only BODMAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#Calculators

not the same thing at all
BODMAS is a convention.

Things like addition is associative, and also commutative, are axioms (or equivalent axioms) of Peano Arithmetic.

Most human beings don't have any problems with seeing that in what we loosely call arithmetic, subtraction 'is' left associative.

Not sure where your fear of brackets and equivalent of being a grammar nazi came from. You need to drag those semigroup lecture notes out and stop having a whinge at other people!

sorry, but I don't know what a semigroup is
 
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