Afaik the order of operations doesn’t have distributive property in it. It would instead simply become multiplication and would go left to right and would therefore be 16.
If you agree that parenthesis go first then the equation becomes 8/2x4. Then it’s simply left to right because multiplication does not take precedence over division. What’s the nuanced talk? That M comes before D in PEMDAS?
If you agree that parenthesis go first then the equation becomes 8/2x4
No, it becomes 8/(2x4). You can’t remove brackets unless there’s only 1 term left inside. Removing them prematurely flips the 4 from being in the denominator to being in the numerator, hence the wrong answer.
The problem is that there’s no “external” parentheses to really tell us which is right:
(8 / 2) * 4or8 / (2 * 4)The amount of comments here shows how much debate this “simple” thing generates
The Distributive Law tells us it’s the latter.
Afaik the order of operations doesn’t have distributive property in it. It would instead simply become multiplication and would go left to right and would therefore be 16.
The Distributive Law applies to all bracketed terms that have a coefficient. It’s literally the first step in solving brackets.
If you agree that parenthesis go first then the equation becomes 8/2x4. Then it’s simply left to right because multiplication does not take precedence over division. What’s the nuanced talk? That M comes before D in PEMDAS?
No, it becomes 8/(2x4). You can’t remove brackets unless there’s only 1 term left inside. Removing them prematurely flips the 4 from being in the denominator to being in the numerator, hence the wrong answer.