LogFAQs > #896348936

Airship_Canon posted...

2 or 288.
Just 2 or just 288 is wrong, since the way it's written results in having both answers be correct.

Sorta.
2 is the "more" correct, since multiplication between x(y) is "higher priority" than x*y, thusly, it means the entirety of 2(9+3) is the denominator.

http://www.purplemath.com/modules/orderops2.htm

The general consensus among math people is that "multiplication by juxtaposition" (that is, multiplying by just putting things next to each other, rather than using the "" sign) indicates that the juxtaposed values must be multiplied together before processing other operations.

I've seen people who have tried to argue this, but I've never seen anyone put it forth formally as an objection to just M/D, left-to-right. At the very least, if you put this into any computer or calculator, it's going to give you 288. The only time I'm going to accept that being against parentheses is higher priority than using an operator is when those parentheses are part of a function. Obviously f(x) does not mean f * x.
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