2 replies on “Order of Operations, Negative Numbers”
It is amazing how many students love to jump the gun and multiply first before they take the exponent.
I was doing order of operations the other day and I was telling my students that I notice these kinds of things a lot. I think that when a student forget about the order and sometimes revert to simplifying whatever looks easiest in the expression. They’re order of operations look like this: 1. Do the easy things first. 2. When you run out of easy things to calculate, work on the rest…maybe follow the actual order of operations at this point.
2 replies on “Order of Operations, Negative Numbers”
It is amazing how many students love to jump the gun and multiply first before they take the exponent.
I was doing order of operations the other day and I was telling my students that I notice these kinds of things a lot. I think that when a student forget about the order and sometimes revert to simplifying whatever looks easiest in the expression. They’re order of operations look like this: 1. Do the easy things first. 2. When you run out of easy things to calculate, work on the rest…maybe follow the actual order of operations at this point.