Recent content by Teabreeze

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...

Awesome! ty

Hi, Is it possible to change my screen name to "Teabreeze" on the site? I'd appreciate it very much. Made a mistake when registering. lol