Question 177425
your talking about order of operations: we need them so everyone comes up with the same answers. Mathematicians could have come up with something different then what we all follow today.  These are simply rules that we all follow for the sake of consistency. Take a look at this link and see if it doesnt help you. Remember no matter what the operation it always works from left to right, and then the next operation or operations are dealt with and those are also handled from left to right
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 http://www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/vol7/order_operations.html