• Rusty Raven M
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    28 days ago

    They are all basically the same thing. Brackets (aka parenthesis) are done first - that’s basically the entire point of brackets. Then you do all the multiplication stuff, which includes division (which is just multiplication in reverse), fractions (which are another way of writing division) and exponentials (which are a shorthand for multiplication of a number by itself). Then you do all the addition/subtraction stuff. Within those three groups it doesn’t really matter which ones you do first.

    It helps to think of it in terms of something concrete - biscuits are good. Multiplication type maths is dealing with packets, addition is like individual biscuits. So if you have 3 packets containing 12 tim tams, plus 5 tim tams, to work out how many you need to work out how many in packets first, then add the individual biscuits - so 3 x 12 + 5, equals 36+5. When you look at it that way it becomes fairly clear that adding your pack of 12 to 5 individual biscuits and then mulitplying that by the 3 packs just doesn’t make sense.