Why does multiplication precede addition?

[Howers]

We all know BEDMAS from grade school: brackets, exponents, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction. My question is, why does multiplication precede addition, and likewise their inverse operations?

 

[disregardthat]

So you would suggest that we make the multiplication before addition, and the inverses of these behind each operation respectively?

How would you pronounce BEASMD?

 

[Howers]

Thats what we already have, multiplication before addition. I'm not proposing anything, I'm just curious as to why it was decided to be that way.

 

[Gokul43201]

It purely convention - useful to the reduce work one has to put in the make any expression have only one interpretation.

Further, I'd rather have things this way. I think it's handier to deal with sums of products than products of sums. The latter are rarer (except in some trivial sense); they mean an expression is factorizable into smaller parts.

 

[seto6]

just wondering if you say that's convection, then how come if you don't do BEDMAS properly you do not get the right answer?.

 

[HallsofIvy]

He said "convention", not "convection".

And you would get the wrong answer because you would be doing the wrong thing!

That's what "convention" means. If some one asked you what 3+ 4 was and you answered "12" because you thought "+" meant multiplication, you would have given the wrong answer because you were wrong about the convention that "+" means addition, not multiplication.

 

[Petr Mugver]

Anyway, BEDMAS is the same as BEDMSA! But it doesn't sound good...