I learned, "Please excuse my dear aunt Sally."
Parentheses Exponents Multiplication Division Addition Subtraction
this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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When you get to doing division and multiplication, it can make sense to look at what is being done to what and see if operations cancel out or simplify. E.g. if you are multiplying by 6 and dividing by 2 and bother operations are going to affect the same number/group/etc. there is no need to do both operations, you just multiply by 3 since that's ultimately what you are doing. Really, any place you can simplify operations, do that. Same goes for addition/subtraction. The Commutative Property is really handy for making hard math easier.
The people spouting the first one didn't learn it correctly.
Most of those are mindlessly parroting the mnemonic device without getting that a few of them are swappable.
Yeah, differentiating between multiplications vs. divisions and additions vs. subtractions doesn't make sense, because they're the same thing respectively, just written differently.
When you divide by 3, you can also multiply by โ
.
When you subtract 7, you can also add -7.
There is one quirk to be aware of, though. When people notate a division with a long horizontal line, that implies parentheses around both of the expressions, top and bottom.
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is how we remember it as either BEDMAS or PEMDAS, but not PEDMAS or BEMDAS. The order of M and D are tied to whether we use the term brackets or parentheses. BEMDAS sounds very wrong to me
Its PEMDAS and nothing else
I think the question is whether you interpret that acronym as P E M D A S or P E MD AS (i.e., whether multiplication has higher precedence than division or whether they are the same).
The latter is correct, the former is an unfortunately common misunderstanding.
Until now, it did not occur to me that there are some who believe multiplication and addition come before division and subtraction, respectively. Order of operations clickbait arguments make a bit more "sense" now.
Please excuse my dear aunt sally. I always assumed this was sequential.
Exponents are typically highest exponent first.
10^10^10 implies 10^(10^10) not (10^10)^10 which is astronomically different.
PEMDAS
Parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction.
Never met multiple exponents in a row at the same size and level without brackets/parenthesis, always saw them as ~a^~b^^c^, or a^(b^(c)) , so I didn't even think about that case.
Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
BEDMAS cuz all y'all "parentheses" people are way too hoity toity and they're called Brackets, y'all
Brackets are squared [ ]
Parentheses are round ( )
Apparently, that's American English. And for whatever reason, it's the British that are less hoity toity about it:
- "brackets" or round brackets ( )
- square brackets [ ]
- curly brackets { }