Order of operations - what is 6÷2(1+2) ?

[trojdor]

When I went to college, I was fortunate enough to have a professor who was part of the massive layoff from NASA at the end of the Apollo program.

His advice .... hammered into us constantly .... was to NEVER write an equation, a line of code, or make a drawing that required any "assumption" on the part of the reader.

(At NASA, it was observed many times that if you gave someone multiple ways to interpret your equation/design, and one of those ways could cause a massive failure .... that would invariably be the one they chose to use.)

He would frequently write the word "assume" on the chalkboard, and do the standard "Why we never assume." comedic routine.

He also mentioned .... apparently in direct conflict with many current math teachers .... that it doesn't actually cost money (or effort) for each parenthesis you use.

I found his advice invaluable when writing code for real-time data acquisition and control systems, as it seemed/seems every programming language handled equations differently, and indeed the parenthesis became my best friend.