Andrew Lehti
2025
Math is supposed to be the one place where everyone agrees. Two plus two is four, and nobody argues about it. But give a room of people a messy expression with a few negatives and exponents, and you’ll get a split vote. Most of us learned PEMDAS or BODMAS as if it were carved in stone, and for simple problems it works fine. Then the expressions get harder, the mnemonic starts pointing in two directions, and the student who was so sure in fifth grade is suddenly arguing with their calculator. Which answer is right? It turns out the answer depends on a choice most of us never realized we were making.
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