this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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To all the people yelling PEMDAS and BOMBDAS or whatever - languages other than English exist.
Meneer Van Dale Wacht Op Antwoord (Exponents, multiplication, division, root, addition, subtraction in Dutch).
Just rolls off the toungue
Wait is Antwoord the same meaning in Afrikaans? Does the name of the band Die Antwoord literally mean The Subtraction?
I wrote the Dutch mnemonic not the actual Dutch word for multiplication etc. The letters of that mnemonic stands for “machtsverheffen”, “vermenigvuldigen”, “delen”, “worteltrekken”, “optellen”, “aftrekken”.
Also “Antwoord” is “answer” in Dutch and Afrikaans.
Ah, thank you!
KlaPuStri
Klammer, Punkt, Strich?
IT'S PEMBDURRS
In French there's no acronym. We just learn it. It's not that hard.
It's not like "PEMDAS" is easy to remember, as "Pemdas" as word does not exist.
We didn't have anything to remember it by either, you just learn the order of operations and that's it.
Works the same in Swedish. 👌
Die Klammer sagt: „Erst komme ich!“ dann gilt die Regel „Punkt vor Strich“
KlaHoPS
Muricans panic without acronyms, let'em be or they'll catch fire.
Math isn't flexible like that though. You're asking for flexibility where there is none. Sure pemdas is technically arbitrary but having a set convention for that is strictly necessary and good teaching.
Not understanding the logic doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
We created math and devised a method to ensure that equations can be solved in a way that leads everybody to the same result. If you don't use the rule, you don't get the same answer as someone who does. In this circumstance, yes, you do teach by nailing down a strict rule as it's foundational to the language (math) that we've created.
We discovered it. There are even multiple animals who know how to count
But there is logic behind them.
1+2+3=6 and 2+3+1=6 also.
But 1+2*3 and 2*3+1 won't come out the same if you do the calculations in just any order. It's not always possible to order them left to right like in the second version, and if we use parentheses for everything we can end up with an illegible mess. I actually tried to type an example of how silly it could look and lost track of my own parentheses nesting before I got very far.
Do you have any other suggestion for how to notate an equation which would make memorization of PEMDAS unnecessary?
🤨
Bro doesn't know how math works