PEMDAS - How can it go wrong?

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2020-04
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Maxwell, Karie
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University of Hawaiʻi — West Oʻahu
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Within the order of operations in elementary school, there are many misconceptions with the proper order because of the mnemonic that we have learned, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally (PEMDAS). This mnemonic has many pros, but there is also a lot of confusion that comes with it. The letters represent a mathematical concept and the order that it should come in. Parentheses, Exponent, Multiply, Divide, Addition, Subtraction. Misconceptions that come from this are that students always do parentheses first, even if it is just around a number representing multiplication (i.e. 2(4)). Another misconception is that students think multiplication comes before division. The third is that addition always come before subtraction. The last is that everything you would solve the pieces of an equation from left to right, not always following the PEMDAS order. Not only does this problem occur in middle school, but it is apparent in adults as well.
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Karie Maxwell's poster presentation titled "PEMDAS - How can it go wrong?"
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1 page
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
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