Right now, a number of the students I work with are all working on the dreaded order of operations concept. It really does frustrate many of them. Some of them learn the acronym PEMDAS. Others don’t.
Of those who do learn it, many of them take it very literally and it’s not difficult to see how this happens.
If you are unfamiliar with PEMDAS, it stands for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. It’s supposed to help you remember how to tackle complicated problems to arrive at the correct answer. However, it’s not as simple as it looks. To correctly apply it, you have to underand that this order isn’t permanently fixed. The steps expand to:
- Resolve anything in brackets [ ] or parentheses ( ).
- Resolve exponents.
- Perform all multiplication and division together, right to left.
- Perform all addition and subtraction together, right to left.
I think we all struggle with teaching this to our students, but I just discovered this helpful tutorial and find it completely helpful. I keep meaning to ask if I can bring it into work, although I may just turn it into a small card and develop a portable book of small cards.
