It’s also clearly not a bug as some people suggest. Bugs are – by definition – unintended behavior.
There are plenty of bugs that are well documented. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve seen someone do something wrong, that they think is 100% right, and “carefully” document it. Then someone finds an edge case and points out the defined behavior has a bug, because the human forgot to account for something.
The other thing I’d point out that I didn’t see in your blog is that I’ve seen many many people say they need to evaluate the 2(3) portion first because “parenthesis”. No matter how many times I explain that this is a notation for multiplication, they try to claim it doesn’t matter because parenthesis. screams into the void
The fact of the matter is that any competent person that has to write out one of these equations will do so in a way that leaves no ambiguity. These viral math posts are just designed to insert ambiguity where it shouldn’t be, and prey on people who can’t remember middle school math.
Regarding your first part in general true, but in this case the sheer amount of calculators for both conventions show that this is indeed intended behavior.
Regarding your second point I tried to address that in the “distributive property” section, maybe I need to rewrite it a bit to be more clear.
I wondered about that too. I'm a gay male in my late 60s, most of my partners enjoyed analingus - but I never got sick or had any problems, never even had any unpleasant taste or anything. I think people get too scared to try stuff, and that's too bad.
A fair criticism. Though I think the hating on PEDMAS (or BODMAS as I was taught) is pretty harsh, as it very much does represent parts of the standard of reading mathematical notation when taught correctly. At least I personally was taught its true form was a vertical format:
B
O
DM
AS
I’d also say it’s problematic to rely on calculators to implement or demonstrate standards, they do have their own issues.
But overall, hey, it’s cool. The world needs more passionate criticisms of ambiguous communication turning into a massive interpration A vs interpretation B argument rather than admitting “maybe it’s just ambiguous”.
The problem with BODMAS is that everybody is taught to remember “BODMAS” instead of “BO-DM-AS” or “BO(DM)(AS)”. If you can’t remember the order of operations by heart you won’t remember that “DM” and “AS” are the same priority, that’s why I suggested dropping “division” and “subtraction” entirely from the mnemonic.
It’s true that calculators also don’t dictate a standard but they implement what conventions are typically used in practice. If a convention would be so dominating (let’s say 95% vs 5%) all calculator manufacturers would just follow the 95% convention, except maybe for some very special-purpose calculators.
Calculators do not implement “what conventions are typically used in practice.” Entering symbols one by one into a calculator is a fundamentally different process from writing them in a sentence. A basic traditional calculator will evaluate each step as you enter it, so e.g. writing 1 + 2 * 3 will print 1, then 3, then 6. It only gets one digit at a time, so it has no choice. But also, this lends itself to iterative calculation, which is inherently ordered. People using calculators get used to this order of operations specifically while using calculators, and now even some of the fancy ones that evaluate expressions use it. Others switched to the conventional order of operations.
It’s not ambiguous, it’s just that correctly parsing the expression requires more precise application of the order of operations than is typical. It’s unclear, sure. Implicit multiplication having higher precedence is intuitive, sure, but not part of the standard as-written order of operations.
I’d really like to know if and how your view on that matter would change once you read the full post. I know it’s very long and a lot of people won’t read it because they “already know” the answer but I’m pretty sure it would shift your perception at least a bit if you find the time to read it.
My opinion hasn’t changed. The standard order of operations is as well defined as a notational convention can be. It’s not necessarily followed strictly in practice, but it’s easier to view such examples as normal deviation from the rules instead of an implicit disagreement about the rules themselves. For example, I know how to “properly” capitalize my sentences too, and I intentionally do it “wrong” all the time. To an outsider claiming my capitalization is incorrect, I don’t say “I am using a different standard,” I just say “Yes, I know, I don’t care.” This is simpler because it accepts the common knowledge of the “normal” rules and communicates a specific intent to deviate. The alternative is to try to invent a new set of ad hoc rules that justify my side, and explain why these rules are equally valid to the ones we both know and understand.
They weren't asking you if there are two sets of rules, we're in a thread that's basically all qbout the Weak vs. Strong juxtaposition debate, they asked you which you consider correct.
Giving the answer to a question they didn't ask to avoid the one they did is immature.
I can't have stopped because I never started, because I'm not even married... See, even I can answer your bad faith question better than you answered the one @onion asked you.
But I will give it to you that my comment should've stipulated avoiding reasonable questions.
The difference is that there are two sets of rules already in use by large groups of people, so which do you consider correct?
However I still think you need your eyes checked, as the end of this comment by @onion is very clearly a question asking you WHICH ruleset you consider correct.
Unless you're refusing the notion of multiplication by juxtaposition entirely, then you must be on one side of this or the other.
“Which ruleset do you consider correct” presupposes, as the comment said, that there are 2 rulesets. There aren’t. There’s the standard, well known, and simplified model which is taught to kids, and there’s the real world, where adults communicate by using context and shared understanding. Picking a side here makes no sense.
When the @onion said there were two different sets of rules, you know as well as I do that they meant strong vs. weak juxtaposition.
You're right that in reality nobody would write an equation like this, and if they did they would usually provide context to help resolve it without resorting to having to guess...
But the point of this post is exactly to point out this hole that exists in the standard order of operations, the drama that has resulted from it, and to shine some light on it.
Picking a side makes no sense only if you have the context to otherwise resolve it... If you were told to solve this equation, and given no other context to do so, you would either have to pick a side or resolve it both ways and give both answers. In that scenario, crossing your arms and refusing to because "it doesn't make sense" would get you nowhere.
In all honesty, I think you're acting like the people who say things like "I've never used algebra, so it was worthless teaching me it as a kid" as though there aren't people who would learn something out of this.
I'll just say it again, you're the one saying this problem is completely unambiguous, with your only explanation as to why being that real people communicate as though that solves every edge case imaginable.
I'm just saying, if you really believe that to be the case, Good luck.
We have a 55" led TV from about 10 years ago. We bought it at a physical sears store. I replaced the power supply board maybe 5-6 years ago? Because the backlight stopped working. The current problem with it is that if it has been on in the past few hours she you try to turn it on again it takes 15-20 minutes to finally turn on. No amount of power cycling or fiddling fixes it, you just have to press the power button and wait. If you turn it on after it has been off all night, then it starts up fine. I really don't want to buy a new TV right now and I don't really want a smart TV anyway.
But, you kinda have to do one playthrough like that. You can have the playlist perfect in theory, but until you listen to it all the way through, you can’t know that you got things the way you really want them. Quick skipping through is the best way to do that with the ability to keep track of what your impressions of the playlist are, rather than just vibing to single songs and missing the overall flow.
It’s absurd absurd how much thought I’ve put into playlist creation and management lol.
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