ex: 4 – 8 x 3/2

w/ order of operations = -8

without order of operations = -6

B – brackets

E – exponents

D – division and

M – multiplication in the order they occur

A – addition and

S – subtraction in the order they occur

I guess it’s some sort of Law of the Universe. It simply wouldn’t make sense if you had an equation, eg. 7 plus15 divided by 3, and you actually did the calculating in the order the numbers occur. The answer’s supposed to be 12, but instead you’d have to work out 22 divided by 3. I have no idea what that would be.

mathematician A says

8 + 3 x 4

11 x 4 = 44

mathematician B says

8 + 3 x 4

8 + 12 = 20

They can’t both be right, so we have the order of operations to keep order and make sure there is only one right answer.

1.Braces { }

2.Brackets [ ]

3. Paraenthesese ( )

4.Exponents

5. Multiply and divide left to right.

6. Add and subtract left to right.

hope this helps =)

-edit-

i forgot to put in exponents…fixed that