Quote:
Originally Posted by MoonlitSunshine
"pick one" is not a solution. If you have a equation x + y = 5, you can't just "pick a y" and then assume your answer for x is correct. You need more information, namely a value for y, or in the case of this thread, extra parentheses to define whether the * or the / should be done first.
|
So should we just not solve any equations that don't get the same answer using all orders of operations? The equations I'm presented with at school were written with the order of operations that I'm used to in mind, so that's the one I use. I assumed this one was too, which may or may not have been a mistake, but I went ahead and solved it the way I've been taught too. I suppose the best thing to do when one comes across an equation would be to somehow find out what order the person who wrote it had in mind, but in many cases that's impossible.
Threaded Mode