this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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To be clear, it's the standard order of operations (PEMDAS) that is arbitrary. The expression in the post, assuming PEMDAS, is not arbitrary. There's only one correct answer.
Also, I dunno man. The window from where math is complicated enough to have multiple different operators to where expressions get too complicated to be easily readable with just parentheses to denote order should be passed by like, early to mid highschool, if not junior high. Point being, frankly if you're struggling with PEMDAS, your either still a high schooler, or you probably should be.
Or we can all learn polish notation
It's not arbitrary just because you don't understand the how and why of it. The expression could certainly be written more clearly, but that's an entirely separate matter.
Um, I think we're agreeing. The expression is not arbitrary, it only has one correct answer. We agree on that. I'm saying that using PEMDAS is an arbitrary convention. If we all agreed to rewrite our equations in PEASMD, it would be ugly, you'd probably need more parentheses, but it would still work. People in this thread have used set theory to explain that PEMDAS makes more sense, and it totally does, but it doesn't strictly have to be that way.
I'm actually finding two different definitions of arbitrary on the Internet: 1. Based on individual discretion, 2. Random. I had the first in mind.
By the end of highschool you've mostly stop dealing with numbers and moved on to algebra, which foregoes the confusion of PEMDAS. a+bc is very obvious.