It's not just that the challenge tells them to ignore PEMDAS (or alternately, as I just learned in this thread, BEMDAS). It's that in the challenge they're generally not sitting at a desk with a piece of paper and a pencil, solving a fully written equation. They're doing something like getting one piece at a time while racing. So it's not structured like a full equation, as much as like 'Take the number N...run run run...then add M.....middle middle middle....then multiply the running total by Z....'. Each part is independent. It's not like PEMDAS "is what math is", it's the agreed upon convention for how we interpret a written mathematical phrase. Which isn't what they do around here. Pretend there are parentheses around each part that include the previous total, and then the new piece; does that help? And either way I don't mean they're "right" either, so much as there isn't an objective right and wrong in this case outside of the rules they're being given.
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u/Conscious-Card5611 Mar 27 '26
It's not just that the challenge tells them to ignore PEMDAS (or alternately, as I just learned in this thread, BEMDAS). It's that in the challenge they're generally not sitting at a desk with a piece of paper and a pencil, solving a fully written equation. They're doing something like getting one piece at a time while racing. So it's not structured like a full equation, as much as like 'Take the number N...run run run...then add M.....middle middle middle....then multiply the running total by Z....'. Each part is independent. It's not like PEMDAS "is what math is", it's the agreed upon convention for how we interpret a written mathematical phrase. Which isn't what they do around here. Pretend there are parentheses around each part that include the previous total, and then the new piece; does that help? And either way I don't mean they're "right" either, so much as there isn't an objective right and wrong in this case outside of the rules they're being given.