this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Presuming PEMDAS is our order of operations and the 5 next to the parentheses indicates multiplication...
2+5(8-5) -> 2+5(3) -> 2+15=17
Other than adding a multiplication indicator next to the left parentheses for clarification (I believe it's * for programming and text chat purposes, a miniature "x" or dot for pen and paper/traditional calculators), this seems fine, yeah.
...I worry about how many people may not understand how to solve equations like these.
That's not even an equation, just basic arithmetic
Fair enough, I've heard "math problem" and "math equation" used interchangeably.
Also you would be surprised how many people do not know basic algebra, at least in the US rofl
You. You are one of them bc you do not know what an equation is.
There is no algebra here. This is arithmetic.
When I made my example, I used an algebraic expression, but yeah, the original question was arithmetic, sorry. Not very good at explaining things XD
Technically not algebra, right? Algebra is where you move things around and solve for variables, and that kind of thing. This is just arithmetic.
You're right, that's what I meant. Fixed it, thanks!
Algebra has horrible syntax. Way too much implications.
While I never failed a math class, I also never went past high school. When would your presumptions NOT be true?
Some forms of programming syntax, although there are the fringe cases where an equation (or function in programming) is represented by a symbol in conjunction with a parentheses input.
For example:
y(x) = 2*x+3
5+y(1) = 10, as 1 is substituted in for x in the prior equation.
And in some languages a number can be used as a name of a variable or a function, so it can be anything really
Not in most programming languages, though. You cannot start names with a number. Unless you're using some strange character that merely looks like a number, anyways. Programming with unicode can get weird but generally works without issue these days.
Wouldn't we just assume function expressions are always "in parenthesis"? Then it's just a substitution and no rules were changed.
Multiplication sign is not required in situations like this. Same with unknowns - you don't have to write
2*x, you just write2x.I prefer BM-DAS, no one's out here doing exponents, and no one calls brackets "parentheses"...
The way I was taught growing up, brackets are [these]. Parenthesis are (these).
Yes, technically the latter are also brackets. But they can also be called parenthesis, whereas the former is exclusively a bracket. So we were taught to call them separate words to differentiate while doing equations.
I'm a theoretical physics grad student and a night school maths teacher, I have never heard this distinction. People in academia around me call them round and square brackets.
It's a US vs UK (and probably others) distinction. The ( ) are almost never called brackets in the US, unless it's a regional thing I'm not aware of. Also the [ ] didn't get used in any math classes I was in the US up through calculus except for matrices.
Interesting! Nobody at my institute is a native English speaker. They're from several European and some Asian and south American countries.
Yeah, but as an adult it depends entirely on whether you're in an industry or hobby that requires that level of bracket nuance/exponents.
Most of us are just trying to remember the basics.
I learnt it as BODMAS (brackets, orders, division and multiplication, addition and subtraction).
Edit: I see we're repeating points from the earlier posts down there 👇 (with default sort).