• barsoap@lemm.ee
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    28 days ago

    Nothing. And that’s why people don’t write equations like that: You either see

         4
    6 + ---
         2
    

    or

     6 + 4
    -------
       2
    

    If you wrote 6 + 4 / 2 in a paper you’d get reviewers complaining that it’s ambiguous, if you want it to be on one line write (6+4) / 2 or 6 + (4/2) or 6 + ⁴⁄₂ or even ½(6 + 4) Working mathematicians never came up with PEMDAS, which disambiguates it without parenthesis, US teachers did. Noone else does it that way because it does not, in the slightest, aid readability.

    • And that’s why people don’t write equations like that

      Says someone who clearly hasn’t looked in any Maths textbooks

      If you wrote 6 + 4 / 2 in a paper you’d get reviewers complaining that it’s ambiguous

      Only if their Maths was very poor. #MathsIsNeverAmbiguous

      Working mathematicians never came up with PEMDAS

      Yes they did.

      which disambiguates it without parenthesis

      It was never ambiguous to begin with.

      Noone else does it that way

      Says someone who has never looked in a non-U.S. Maths textbooks - BIDMAS, BODMAS, BEDMAS, all textbooks have one variation or another.