Back in November, my son came home with a 6th grade math test in which he lost a point because he put in parenthesis that were not strictly necessary, according to the order of operations.
Here’s the note I sent to the math teacher:
I’ve been meaning to write about this, but not getting around to it. I am moved to write because on Alex’ recent math test, he lost a point because he put in parenthesis that were not necessary due to the order of operations.
I’m not going to argue about the grading, which is fine given the syllabus, but rather I want to express my view that teaching order of operations at all is evil and pernicious.
The only correct way to handle math is to always put in all the parenthesis. Here’s why.
In 6th grade math, the order of operations is pretty simple, multiply and divide are “stronger” than addition and subtraction. Once you get to the rest of mathematics, and then to programming languages, the situation becomes impossible.
I hate to cite wikipedia, but this article is relevant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations
Just look at the page and its examples and just the visual impression of vast complexity is there.
It is beyond dangerous to teach these things <and expect folks to remember them>. They won’t remember the details, but <will think they know>. Smart, capable engineers will write expressions, thinking they understand what they mean, and <they will be wrong>.
A few years ago I was working at SiCortex, and we built a custom chip with about 150 million transistors, as part of a supercomputer. The logic is expressed in the VHDL programming language, which like many, has a defined order of operations. An engineer did something quite innocuous, confusing the order of operations of logical OR and bitwise AND, and in consequence the mathematics expression meant something quite different than intended. This was caught quite by accident, but had it gone through, the cost would have been a half million dollar replacement chip mask and about 3 months of schedule.
I very strongly feel that order of operations is a quaint dated idea that we really need to stop teaching and stop depending on. If you always specify exactly what you mean by grouping operations with parenthesis, you and the computer will always agree about what the math means.
This also means that putting in the parenthesis, even if not needed, is a good idea, it makes the meaning of the expression clear without any risk. This sort of care should be applauded, not penalized!
Some programming languages, like LISP, get this right – they don’t allow chained operations at all, and have no need for order of operations. Of course they don’t even use infix operators. In LISP, one says (+ 3 4) or (+ (* 2 4) (* 5 6)) and there is never any confusion about it.
-Larry
PS Don’t get me started about mean, median, and mode. After 4th grade, has anyone actually used Mode?