Quote:
Originally Posted by Minte
I'm not suggesting that the order of operations didn't exist 30 years ago. As new engineers we were all made aware of it. What I am saying is that it wasn't accepted in engineering school. Many trigonometric solutions were pages of calculations. We were required to do these without computers, which weren't available or hand held calculators. The precise nature of the work I chose doesn't allow for potentials. Only absolutes.
The fact that the basic laws of mathematics exist doesn't mean they are relevant today. I would wager,that of everyone that posted in this thread there might be one or two who even know what the sine of an angle is. Calculating seconds of a degree was a process that would take time. Today,with 3 mouse clicks we can measure angles.
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So why are you being so stubborn on this? This isn't an advanced Trig question. This is a middle school level equation. You wouldn't see this in any university level course. It's fundamental math.
Of course the order of operations is still relevant today. If it weren't, how would you know that the brackets come first? How would you know you have to calculate exponents first? Are you suggesting that exponents must also be wrapped in brackets or we couldn't know if they're to be calculated first or not?
As an Engineer it really makes sense to you that at some point somebody decided to make the rules of math MORE complicated by requiring brackets where they haven't been needed for hundreds of years? Should we expect that soon you'll need to write 3^3 in an equation as (3*3*3) so as not to be ambigious when it's well understood already what it means?
You're really maintaining that MOST of the rules of of the order of operations still apply (brackets, exponents, left to right) but somewhere along the line multiplication and division before addition and substraction was dropped from it? Despite all the evidence to the contrary that's already been posted?
I really never would have pegged you as being this stubborn or as somebody that would be trolling in threads but clearly one of those two must be the case here.