Quote:Mnemonics are often used to help students remember the rules, but the rules taught by the use of acronyms can be misleading. In the United States the acronym PEMDAS is common. It stands for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. PEMDAS is often expanded to "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally", with the first letter of each word creating the acronym PEMDAS.[7] Canada and New Zealand use BEDMAS, standing for Brackets, Exponents, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction. Most common in the UK and Australia[11] are BODMAS meaning "B"rackets, "O"f or "O"rder, "D"ivision, "M"ultiplication, "A"ddition and "S"ubtraction in Nigeria and some other West African countries and BIDMAS. In some English speaking countries, Parentheses may be called Brackets, or symbols of inclusion and Exponents may be called either Indices, Powers or Orders, which have the same precedence as Roots or Radicals. Since multiplication and division are of equal precedence, M and D are often interchanged, leading to such acronyms as BOMDAS. The original order of operations in some countries was BODMAS, which stands for Brackets, Orders or pOwers, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction. The O is sometimes associated with Of. This mnemonic was common until exponentials were added into the mnemonic.[12][13][14]

These mnemonics may be misleading when written this way,[7] especially if the user is not aware that multiplication and division are of equal precedence, as are addition and subtraction. Using any of the above rules in the order "addition first, subtraction afterward" would also give the wrong answer to the problem

jessikalauren Wrote:I'm studying for College Mathematics thru InstantCert - and it says I should use BEDMAS for the order of operations?

I've always used PEMDAS (including last semester on campus taking beginning algebra) which of course reverses the multiply/divide and I could get every question wrong if I use the wrong one.

Could someone kindly confirm which is used on the CLEP exam??

dfrecore Wrote:You get the same results, because it doesn't matter which order the multiply/divide portion is in, nor the addition/subtraction.

jsd Wrote:You don't get the same answer either way.

take this example: 4 / 2 * 2. Your answer is wither 4 or 1 depending on what you do first.

(the correct answer is 4, by the way, because you do it in the order of what appears first).

dfrecore Wrote:But that's because you do it in order, NOT because division comes before multiplication.

A quote from wikipedia "multiplication and division are of equal precedence, as are addition and subtraction."

jsd Wrote:yes, that's the point i was clarifying. You said order doesn't matter, but order does matter. you do the sign that comes first from left to right.

dfrecore Wrote:I was saying that multiplication doesn't take precedence over division or addition over subtraction.