Reply To: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 x 0 = ?

The answer is 14.

but those are a convention for convenience.

Not really, they’re a convention so that anyone else looking at the equation can be clear what it means. Otherwise, what’s to say we can’t interpret the above as:

(1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1) – (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1*0) = 4

or

(1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1) – (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1)*0 = 10

or 0, as several people above said, etc…

Without a common set of rules and definitions, we can’t have symbolic math!