• AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    My mom’s a mathematician, she got annoyed when I said that the order of operations is just arbitrary rules made up by people a couple thousand years ago

    • tamal3@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It’s organized so that more powerful operations get precedence, which seems natural.

      Set aside intentionally confusing expressions. The basic idea of the Order of Operations holds water even without ever formally learning the rules.

      If an addition result comes first and gets exponentiated, the changes from the addition are exaggerated. It makes addition more powerful than it should be. The big stuff should happen first, then the more granular operations. Of course, there are specific cases where we need to reorder, or add clarity, which is why human decisions about groupings are at the top.

      • Mango@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Yeah, but that’s why I like to buff my base attack before I invest in multipliers and armor penetration!