Reply To: Elementary Mathematical Equation

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@ubiquitin

If there’s one standard used by all textbooks then I’d agree with you but from the different answers I see listed above it seems as if different textbooks teach the order of operations differently. (I can not recall seeing a textbook that gave an order of operation that would yield a number other than 1 but from Google searches it seems like there are.)

Well, I think everyone would agree that if it says 2+3=6 that it shouldn’t be followed but there are other situations that are more complicated. A college professor of mine told our class of a story where a builder followed the engineer’s directions while building an oil rig and it collapsed. After the investigation was completed it turned out that one (or more) of the formulas required an integral that couldn’t be solved in closed rectangular format and the software used a numerical approach which the builders used without changing the internal default tolerance. Anyway- there was a massive lawsuit with everyone blaming everyone else and the lawyers and expert witnesses making tons of money.