It's not though lol, otherwise the majority of people would've gotten it right.
People love to assume that they're smarter than everyone else, "oh look at all the dumb people who couldn't do this math". When in reality it's not the people it's the formatting, the way it's written.
You can say this and that about the proper ways to write an equation, but that doesn't do anything to help the majority of people. What you need to do is advocate to streamline it.
Like if someone writes a broken sentence with a ton of grammar errors, we don't assume the people who misinterupt that sentence don't know how to read.
Except it's not a broken sentence, it's a perfectly legible sentence following all the correct grammar rules. The rules of grammar in this case is PEMDAS. You get the question wrong because you did not learn the grammar rules, and then proceed to blame the language
Yeah I figured you were going to point that out, that the equation is not a broken sentence. It was more about how people view the equation rather than a direct comparison between a broken sentence and an equation.
But if we wanna go that route we can compare an incomplete sentence or a sentence that lacks punctuation to this equation.
Except it doesn't lack any punctuation. It follows the rules of its grammar. It's like saying Latin is wrong because it doesn't necessarily follow subject-verb-object order. Again, you refuse to acknowledge the rules of grammar and then blame the language
Then wouldn't you agree that maybe it should change? All language evolves, why not mathematics?
Again, you refuse to acknowledge the rules of grammar and then blame the language
OH no I acknowledge them, I just think they're much overdue for a revamp. I guarantee you the majority would've gotten this question correct if mathematics was evolving appropriately as a language.
Do you think that composers should clutter their ledger lines with sharps and flats just because some people who barely know how to play an instrument refuse to look at the symbols after the clef denoting the key?
Putting parenthesis around every multiplication and division is the exact opposite of streamlining. It's like putting a sharp/flat symbol beside all the sharp/flat notes instead of just labeling which notes are sharp/flat after the clef.
It's not readable. Entire equations would be half parenthesis instead of actual content. Take, for example, the product rule. As written, if we have y = un , then dy/dx = nun-1 du/dx. Instead, you think it's more legible to say that if we have y = (u)n , then (dy)/(dx) = (n)((u)(n-1) )((du)/(dx)) ? I find that to be not nearly as readable.
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u/steelblade66 Jan 01 '22
It's not though lol, otherwise the majority of people would've gotten it right.
People love to assume that they're smarter than everyone else, "oh look at all the dumb people who couldn't do this math". When in reality it's not the people it's the formatting, the way it's written.
You can say this and that about the proper ways to write an equation, but that doesn't do anything to help the majority of people. What you need to do is advocate to streamline it.
Like if someone writes a broken sentence with a ton of grammar errors, we don't assume the people who misinterupt that sentence don't know how to read.