- #141
late347
- 301
- 15
Mark44 said:Sure you can - you just have to use braces.
##2^{3^{4^3}}##
Here's the LaTeX I used:
##2^{3^{4^3}}##
Where should you start to calculate according to pemdas rule?
Mark44 said:Sure you can - you just have to use braces.
##2^{3^{4^3}}##
Here's the LaTeX I used:
##2^{3^{4^3}}##
late347 said:Where should you start to calculate according to pemdas rule?
PeroK said:It seems to me that expressions can be grouped together in several ways (in addition to parenthesis) and essentially the simple rule suggested by PEMDAS is not so simple.
Offhand, I can't think of any other grouping mechanism, other than the bar that I mentioned, which is also used in typesetting to separate the numerator from the denominator, as inPeroK said:It seems to me that expressions can be grouped together in several ways (in addition to parenthesis)
Can you provide an example where it doesn't?PeroK said:and essentially the simple rule suggested by PEMDAS is not so simple.
PEMDAS/BODMAS is a piece of cake in comparison to the precedence rules of programming languages.PeroK said:the simple rule suggested by PEMDAS is not so simple.
gmax137 said:I thought the original peeve was the way people fixate on this PEMDAS "rule" and spend all their energy on it, rather than learning something about numbers or mathematics. If so, it seems the thread proves the point...
Tying in the associative property is worthwhile, but it seems there would be more direct ways to bring that up in class.
+1clope023 said:That and the religious dislike of rote learning and memorization.
PeroK said:What's wrong with simply?
(6+3) + (-1/3) + (1*0) + (-4^3) + (1x2)
All those extra brackets are not needed not because of PEMDAS but because addition is associative. If you give up PEMDAS you do not lose the associativity of addition or muliplication as many of you seem to assume!
... well, it depends ...jack action said:What's wrong with simply writing:
##a \times a \times a##
There, now it's clear! No ambiguity, since multiplication is associative!
fresh_42 said:... well, it depends ...
jack action said:For some reason that I don't understand, you seem to refuse recognizing the validity of those rules.
!
PeroK said:For the reason that the rules cause ambiguity. This is evidenced by the fact that the two Microsoft calculators gave different answers for the same expression.
And that 76% of the population gave the "wrong" answer.
I thought this is the principle behind national elections?micromass said:Referring to the ignorance of the total population isn't really helpful.
Krylov said:I thought this is the principle behind national elections?
micromass said:And how exactly would calculators be programmed without PEMDAS? How would the removal of PEMDAS over some other convention like white spaces by beneficial here?
Also 60% of the US population says the evolution is false or is not sure about it.
Also, this http://blog.sciencegeekgirl.com/2009/11/09/myth-because-the-astronauts-had-heavy-boots/
Referring to the ignorance of the total population isn't really helpful.
PeroK said:I'm not the only one:
http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/pedagogy/ambiguity/
This issue is not as clear cut as many of you would like to pretend.
No, I agree with you on this, but I have other peeves to petPeroK said:There may be more on this forum but the brow beating I've taken would deter most from uttering a word in my defence!
micromass said:Again, how would the removal of this rule be beneficial in programming?
PeroK said:I also question whether these rules help or hinder maths education - a question apparently I'm not at liberty to ask.
Its not "the brow beating" that you've taken, but that this doesn't seem to me as black and white as its being implied by this discussion. It seems to me that those rules are like Bohr's model for arithmetic. They seem important for educating children but you should get rid of them as soon as possible, i.e. when you're sure the children have the intuition about algebra(cases mentioned by micromass that imply we seem to use some rules there) that we grown ups have now.PeroK said:There may be more on this forum but the brow beating I've taken would deter most from uttering a word in my defence!
Shayan.J said:Its not "the brow beating" that you've taken, but that this doesn't seem to me as black and white as its being implied by this discussion. It seems to me that those rules are like Bohr's model for arithmetic. They seem important for educating children but you should get rid of them as soon as possible, i.e. when you're sure the children have the intuition about algebra(cases mentioned by micromass that imply we seem to use some rules there) that we grown ups have now.
You don't have to hit that with a sledgehammer like PEMDAS.micromass said:No, please do address this. I'm interested how you would teach this to children. How would you teach children to evaluate ##2p+3q##?
PeroK said:I wonder how uniformly implemented the current rules are, in any case.
I think even programmers forget most of that and just use intuition and parentheses. At least that's the case about me!Krylov said:I am tempted to say one thing specifically about programming.
In the programming languages that I know, there are many more unary and binary operators that in basic school arithmetic. (Probably C++ tops it all in this regard.) Textbooks and references usually come with a table of precedence. I found that in practice it did not at all contribute to the clarity of code when these rules of precedence were fully exploited by the programmer. Usually I found it much, much clearer when parentheses were used to remove ambiguity from complicated expressions, such as those involving both ordinary and pointer arithmetic.
Ok, now I go back to my own peeves, although I do enjoy reading along with this discussion.
I used to work in the Windows team at Microsoft, but not with the bunch that does the calculator. If I had to guess, the intent of the designers of the "four-banger" calculator, was to do simple (i.e., with two operands) add/subtract/multiply/divide calculations. I would further guess that it's stack-based, meaning that it takes the two operands and an operator (+, - *, /) and carries out the operation.PeroK said:For the reason that the rules cause ambiguity. This is evidenced by the fact that the two Microsoft calculators gave different answers for the same expression.
It wouldn't be the first time in history that 76% of the population gave the wrong answer, so I'm not impressed by that statistic.PeroK said:And that 76% of the population gave the "wrong" answer.
The expression in this article of the link seems clear-cut to me.PeroK said:I'm not the only one:
http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/pedagogy/ambiguity/
This issue is not as clear cut as many of you would like to pretend.
I agree, but then it wasn't a problem of ambiguity, but rather, a problem of comprehension by humans.Krylov said:In the programming languages that I know, there are many more unary and binary (and ternary) operators than in basic school arithmetic. (Probably C++ tops it all in this regard.) Textbooks and references usually come with a table of precedence. I found that in practice it did not at all contribute to the clarity of code when these rules of precedence were fully exploited by the programmer. Usually I found it much, much clearer when parentheses were used to remove ambiguity from complicated expressions, such as those involving both ordinary and pointer arithmetic.
As I have already explained, the above means exactly the same as (a + b)/(c + d). That is the purpose of the bar between the top and the bottom and the bar above the radicand in a radical. Why is this so hard?PeroK said:You don't have to hit that with a sledgehammer like PEMDAS.
I've already answered that above: the precedence of multiplication is a universal rule.
What I wouldn't do is insist on PEMDAS and then have to explain:
##\frac{a+b}{c+d}##
And why you do the additions before the division.
PeroK said:That's what I as a 15 year old would have taken exception to! I fail to see it ad a logical consequence of PEMDAS.
I think I would just treat fractions on their own merit. This is how we evaluation a fraction. There are all sorts of other things to deal with. Common factors, addition of fractions, partial fractions. Order of operations is the least of it.
PeroK said:What I wouldn't do is insist on PEMDAS and then have to explain:
##\frac{a+b}{c+d}##
And why you do the additions before the division. That's what I as a 15 year old would have taken exception to! I fail to see it ad a logical consequence of PEMDAS.
That's because you're determined to stick with PEMDAS, so you need your implied parenthesis. Whereas, I never learned PEMDAS so I'm free to say in this case we do the division last. As I have no a priori rule that operations must be done in a set order it doesn't upset my mathematic apple cartMark44 said:As I have already explained, the above means exactly the same as (a + b)/(c + d). That is the purpose of the bar between the top and the bottom and the bar above the radicand in a radical. Why is this so hard?