We do various mathematical operations in our daily life right from shopping essentials to product designing and manufacturing. Some involve a very simple calculation using a single operation, while others require multiple operations cascaded with one another.
BODMAS/PEMDAS helps solve the expression involving multiple operations using the order of operation specified.
Let us take this example.
Sam gives 2 candies each to Nikhil and Roshan and has 3 candies left. How many candies did he have in total?
How do we write this arithmetically?
We can solve this as 2 + 2 + 3 = 4 + 3 = 7
(or)
This could be written as 2 x 2 + 3 (Since multiplication is repeated addition)
How do we solve this? There are 2 possibilities:
- Multiplication first, followed by addition: 4 + 3 = 7 (or)
- Addition followed by multiplication: 2 x 5 = 10
But we know that the total number of candies is 7 and not 10, which is achieved by doing the multiplication first followed by the addition.
Well, we know the context here hence it is easy to make sense of the order of operations.
What if we don’t know the context or the story behind? How do we know which operation should we start with?
In such cases, need of a convention arises and BODMAS / PEMDAS came into existence.
- B – Brackets/ P – Parentheses
- O – Order of exponent / E – Exponent
- D – Division
- M – Multiplication
- A – Addition
- S – Subtraction
But the convention is not devised as something random.
Let us solve some scenarios which helps convey the real meaning behind this convention.
Connect 2 Context 