Is there any deep reason why math follows PEMDAS order of operations?
It seems like it's totally arbitrary to me. Like couldn't we read things right-to-left instead of left to right and couldn't we do subtraction before multiplication?
Why does it matter? Is it just a made up "rule" that...
I think I'm confused, because I thought we literally couldn't distribute. In other words, I thought at that having some expression in parenthesis meant that that WHOLE thing was a "unit" and whatever you do to it, then you must do it to the whole thing.
So, when you distribute the way I did...
You wrote:
a(b+c) = ab + bc
BUT, I thought distributive property was this instead:
a(b+c) = ab +ac
Is this the correct version or is yours the correct one?
Thanks.
Homework Statement
Basically, I have to distribute this negative sign in this math expression:
- (-x^2 + 12x +24)
Homework Equations
none
The Attempt at a Solution
I know from the rules that we get:
(x^2 - 12x - 24)
My question is why do we distribute the negative sign to begin with? I...