8/2(2+2) what do you come up with?

[Ms. Toad]

19. You only do 4 passes, not 6

P - E - MD - AS

As a former math teacher, I hate it that sloppy acronym, since it leads people to incorrect results.

Multiplication and division are equal priority - so you do whichever you encounter first, from left to right.
Same for addition and subtraction.

You can see this by recognizing that division is just multiplication by the reciprocol - so you have to get the same answer whether you divide by 2 or multiply by 1/2.

swapping *1/2 for /2, the problem becomes: 8 * 1/2 * (2+2)

8*1/2*4, doing the multiplicaiton from left to right = 4*4 = 16.

The fact that you get a different answer merely by changing it to a pure multiplication should tell you that you don't do all multiplication before doing division.

(Same for addition and subtraction. All subtraction is really just adding a negative, so they have to be the same priority)