Whats so ambiguous about it exactly? If you understand HOW PEMDAS is SUPPOSED to work, equations lose ambiguity.
Lets break it down
48/2(9+3)Ok, so what gets people is the 2. Its not surrounded by parenthesis, so we can cut out this bullstuff
48/(2(9+3))To separate it a little more, we write it as
48/2*(9+3) even though its kinda redundant, because we SHOULD know that in algebra, when a number is directly next to parenthesis, you multiple whats inside.
Now, for P. We solve in the Parenthesis, which becomes
48/2(12)Now we have people who decide to EITHER:
A) add in parenthesis [like so
48/(2(12))]
or
B) Take PEMDAS too seriously and does multiplication first. Both are incorrect.
That aside, we move to the M
and D. This is important. This is not "M
then D"
So, we take a look at it again:
48/2*(12)"Oh but look multiplication lets do th-" NO, you see this little thing here "/"(or ÷)? It means Division. Now, if we look back a few lines, we said M
and D, which means neither is more important than the other.
So, we solve that.
48/2 becomes
24. Now, to put that back in, we would have
24(12)Next, we look at it again. Parenthesis was solved, no exponents, but there is some multiplication, so we solve for that
24(12)=288Now, if we solve it wrong and decide to be little forgeters who add in parenthesis, like so:
48/(2(9+3))We would go into the parenthesis, then solve inside the next parenthesis and get 12 (we did this already)
Then, we multiple
2 and
12We will have after all that
48/24, which is two. Now, this was is completely wrong, because like I said, it wasn't written this[
48/(2(9+3)) ] way and we can use PEMDAS like nice little smart adults.
normal math logic implies that 48/2 is the coefficient of the term (9+3)
write 48/2 as a fraction in front of the 9+3. what does 48/2 simplify to? 24. so 24 is the new coefficient. 24(9+3).
what else would you do here exactly?
Only thing wrong would be that you solve 9+3 first because its in parenthesis, but other than that, this is correct.
Poll