• marcos@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Some people insist there’s no “correct” order for the basic arithmetic operations. And worse, some people insist the correct order is parenthesis first, then left to right.

    Both of those sets of people are wrong.

    • Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 months ago

      Well, this is just a writing standard that is globally agreed on,

      The writing rules are defined by humans not by natural force
      (That one thing and another thing are two things, is a rule from nature, as comparison)

      • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Save yourself the trouble - Smartman Apps is a crank. They categorically will not comprehend the difference between the notation we made up and how numbers work. Dingus keeps saying ‘animals can count’ like that proves parentheses-first is completely different! from distribution.

        Why’d Russel and Whitehead bother with the Principia Mathematica when they could just point to Clever Hans?

    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 months ago

      I mean, arithmetic order is just convention, not a mathematical truth. But that convention works in the way we know, yes, because that’s what’s… well… convention

      • marcos@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Social conventions are real, well defined things. Some mathematicians like to pretend they aren’t, while using a truckload of them; that’s a hypocritical opinion.

        That’s not to say you can’t change them. But all of basic arithmetic is a social convention, you can redefine the numbers and operations any time you want too.

        • Social conventions are real, well defined things

          So are the laws of nature, that Maths arises from

          Some mathematicians like to pretend they aren’t, while using a truckload of them; that’s a hypocritical opinion

          No, you making false accusations against Mathematicians is a strawman

          That’s not to say you can’t change them

          You can change the conventions, you cannot change the rules

          But all of basic arithmetic is a social convention

          Nope, law of nature. Even several animals know how to count.

          you can redefine the numbers and operations any time you want too

          And you end up back where you started, since you can’t change the laws of nature

    • MotoAsh@piefed.social
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      2 months ago

      Hopefully you can see where their confusion might come from, though. PEMDAS is more P-E-MD-AS. If you have a bunch of unparenthesized addition and subtraction, left to right is correct. A lot of like, firstgrader math problems are just basic problems that are usually left to right (but should have some extras to highlight PEMDAS somewhere I’d hope).

      So they’re mostly telling you they only remember as much math as a small child that barely passed math exercizes.