What is the correct result?

[dm319]

(04-15-2024 05:40 PM)Matt Agajanian Wrote:  

(04-15-2024 04:44 PM)dm319 Wrote:  1 ÷ 2a (or 1÷2a) will always mean 1÷(2 x a) for me.

BODMAS/PEMDAS is just a helpful acronym to help school children. I don't know when it attained the rank of an international standard.

There is no such thing as implicit multiplication or juxtaposition. There are just 'terms', 'products' or 'distributive law', of which contain coefficients or factors. New terminology is not needed.

There isn't ambiguity - once you've identifed that something is a term, it is clear how the expression is calculated. People claiming ambiguity are being deliberately obtuse because they don't want to accept they're doing it wrong.

There is plenty or historical mathematical context and modern school textbooks that support this concept, but not the reverse.

Yes. I see. What about expressions where there is no telling the full extent of a term of a numerator, denominator, or the end of a summation, Σ since there is no ending notation while dx signifies the end of the expression for integrals & derivatives, for example?

The discussion around the viral maths problem is that people are not getting the concept of terms, even though we know generally what they are when we see them, i.e. 2a, 3b², 4(3+2), 5ab are all terms.

I think you are asking what defines the end of an expression, but that doesn't relate to the BODMAS issue from what I can see. I e.
8÷2(1+3) is the whole expression, 8 and 2(1+3) are terms separated by the ÷ operator. It is no different to:

8÷2a
where a = 1+3