The high-and-mightiness quotient in this thread is reaching critical levels

This is an antimeme

Hrmm.

I read that as resulting in 21.

My education system did fail me.

I plugged that into ghci as 2+5*(8-5), and it says 17.

:(

I did (2+5)*(8-5).

Doh.

[Edit: (Double doh! Mistyped that here as 5+2. XD)]

I'm not seeing a single mention of My Dear Aunt Sally. The youth are lost...

I don't get why these kind of post crop up so often.

The answer to them doesn't matter and these aren't really math questions, because there is no context given. This is just endless discussions about different people having different assumptions on notation used there...

In real math, where the numbers mean something, good and consistent notation is important, but not necessary, because the order of operations or what those operations are exactly would be clear through the context of these formulas. Good notation just makes it easier to spot errors, work with formulas or to avoid confusion.

Here is what I would assume this formula could mean. Someone has 2 apples and 5 bags of apples that initially came with 8 apples each inside, but someone else ate 5 apples from each of these bags.

With this context it is pretty clear what the answer would be.

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.