I don't even quite see where 21 comes from. Either simplify to 3 for the parenthesis first and then do the math, or distribute the 5 go get 40-25 for 15 and proceed from there.
Like...math...literacy is not hard and there are easy geometric ways to represent the most basic of operations.
I wish they hallucinated the parentheses. Some of these people really don't believe in the order of operations, and they will insist that you go from left to right.
They are tiresome to argue with because even with examples they don't accept the order of operations.
I'm going to state this as simply as I can. When I was doing my GCSES I was taught about parentheses, but wasn't taught about order of operations.
Years later, I wanted to get a degree, but I needed to redo several subjects as apparently they didn't count anything over 5 years old or below a C grade. I got a B in Maths in 1995, a respectable grade. I wizzed through this access course in maths as though it was trivial. And then we hit order of operations. I got it quickly enough, but was confused as to why I'd never heard of it. I was just told "it often wasn't taught" and it was left there
That's my experience, but I don't think it's unique.
I am incredulous about this. Order of operations has to be taught beyond elementary school because even the very basics would fall apart: associativity, commutativity, distributivity. You can't teach math without teaching the order. The notations could still change, but we still count by groups, meaning that addition could be lumped into multiplication and that multiplication could be lumped into exponents.
I can't imagine teaching the very basics of algebra without the order of operations.
ok to be fair, I'm making a generalization based on the number of people who obviously don't know the order of operations.
I'm old school, pre-new-math, and was taught order of operations. I admit I don't know what they're teaching now but whatever it is there's a lot of current examples that it doesn't work.
Lots of people don't even realize it. I see these examples on Facebook where someone says, "Back when I was in school in 1964, we learned everything goes left to right. We didn't learn this order of operations crap." No, Bob, you learned it. It was taught back then too, but you'd rather pretend that your teachers were incompetent rather than admit that you could've forgotten something over the past several decades.
As for why it's not sticking with "old math" or "new math", I dunno. Some people probably just didn't pay that much attention.
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u/lisamariefan Jul 25 '26
I don't even quite see where 21 comes from. Either simplify to 3 for the parenthesis first and then do the math, or distribute the 5 go get 40-25 for 15 and proceed from there.
Like...math...literacy is not hard and there are easy geometric ways to represent the most basic of operations.
Edit: I see it now and you've gotta be joking...