this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 84 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (192 children)

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.

[–] TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

While I never failed a math class, I also never went past high school. When would your presumptions NOT be true?

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

And in some languages a number can be used as a name of a variable or a function, so it can be anything really

[–] MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago

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.

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[–] moriquende@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (139 children)

Wouldn't we just assume function expressions are always "in parenthesis"? Then it's just a substitution and no rules were changed.

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