• HereIAm@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Except it does matter. I left some examples for another post with multiplication and division, I’ll give you some addition and subtraction to see order matter with those operations as well.

    Let’s take:
    1 + 2 - 3 + 4

    Addition first:
    (1 + 2) - (3 + 4)
    3 - 7 = -4

    Subtraction first:
    1 + (2 - 3) + 4
    1 + (-1) + 4 = 4

    Right to left:
    1 + (2 - (3 + 4))
    1 + (2 - 7)
    1 + (-5) = -4

    Left to right:
    ((1 + 2) - 3) + 4
    (3 - 3) + 4 = 4

    Edit: You can argue that, for example, the addition first could be (1 + 2) + (-3 + 4) in which case it does end up as 4, but in my opinion that’s another ambiguous case.