this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
4 points (100.0% liked)

Memes

45740 readers
454 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml
sexy_peach@feddit.de
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
4
Confusing... (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by kaptaan_jack@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
top 5 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] nLuLukna@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Pemdas isn't as arbitrary as people in this thread think it is.

I love maths, and I'm going to butcher any attempt to explain why pemdas isnt totally random. But you can look it up if you wanna know more I guess

Besides no one ever uses that notation - by the time you learn about quadratics, you leave multiplication symbols out of the equation entirely and much of the notation changes shape, with division exclusively being expressed as negative powers or fractions.

At that point you aren't going to make mistakes, since each hyperlevel uses a different style of notation. Pemdas is used to teach 4 year olds, and it's fucking dumb. What happens with a log, or sine function. Don't even get me started on integrals and derivatives.

Pemdas is shit, but not because it's abirtary. In fact it's shit because it's a shithole acyromn

[–] Uphillbothways@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Pemdas is mostly just factoring, kinda. That's how you should think of it.

2x4 is really 2+2+2+2.

That first 2+(anything else) can't be acted/operated upon until you've resolved more nested operations down to a comparable level.

That's it. It's not arbitrary. It's not magic. It's just doing similar actions at the same time in a meaningful way. It's just factoring the activities.

[–] kogasa@programming.dev -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It is, in fact, completely arbitrary. There is no reason why we should read 1+2*3 as 1 + (2*3) instead of (1 + 2) * 3 except that it is conventional and having a convention facilitates communication. No, it has nothing to do with set theory or mathematical foundations. It is literally just a notational convention, and not the only one that is still currently used.

Edit: I literally have an MSc in math, but good to see Lemmy is just as much on board with the Dunning-Kruger effect as Reddit.

[–] Uphillbothways@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If you don't accept adding and subtracting numbers as allowed mathematical transactions, multiplication doesn't make sense at all. It isn't arbitrary. It's fundamental basic accounting.

[–] kogasa@programming.dev -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What you just said is at best irrelevant and at worst meaningless. No, the fact that multiplication is defined in terms of addition does not mean that it is required or natural to evaluate multiplication before addition when parsing a mathematical expression. The latter is a purely syntactic convention. It is arbitrary. It isn't "accounting."