I think I understand now what Lukie was saying about how math has a way of just being true and any error lies with the reader. I'm saying that math notation is paralleled to language and that if the readers can be confused, you need to take special care to keep them from being confused.
In this case, the readers were confused because some readers learned one rule and other readers learned another rule. We all think that one rule is superior, but because the Math Gods have not passed down the commandment - Thou Shalt Follow Order of Operations Always, nor has anyone derived the perfect operator precedence for our convention of notation, we're left to recognize that the problem as stated has a bit of ambiguousness to it.
Reply With Quote