Reply to PARCC monitoring student's social media, wants schools to "punish" them

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "PARCC monitoring student's social media, wants schools to "punish" them"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
The key phrase is "a long time ago."  In so far as a convention was established way back when as to how to read an expression it matters NOW what order. Convention and notation are important so everyone is on the same page. That's why its best if the educators who are writing math curricula follow the conventions already established.  
Try this doing the exponent first to see why: (3+2)^2[/quote]

Yes, of course convention and notation are important. Nonetheless, the point is that order of operations is a convention.[/quote]

Well I'm not completely convinced of this.  I think the orders evolved naturally.  If mult didn't precede addition, how would you distinguish between something like 3 + 2*6 [to mean (3+2)*6 = 30] and expressing what we know as 3 + 2*6 [=15].  I don't think it was completely arbitrary how the order of operation came to exist.  Same with the above exmaple: (3+2)^2.  If the exponent came first it would equivalent to 3+2^2 , so how could you express (3+2)^2 to mean what we think it means under those rules?  I didn't read the explanation someone linked so maybe it is explained there.  In any case, it's not a convention for Pearson Corp to change.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics