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John_Vattic t1_iyc64td wrote

Reply to comment by Spadeninja in ELI5 why we first multiply, then add by TheManNamedPeterPan

In your example, you're talking about if the 'agreed language' of math was different, the other answer would be correct. But, if the required answer for this scenario was 7, the actual calculation would be written differently.

It's like if you have a room full of people speaking English, and one dude who only speaks French. It's not that French is wrong, but they're not going to be understanding each other.

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Spadeninja t1_iyc89h3 wrote

Right……

But like if the math adds up then what makes that one French person wrong?

Not sure what point you think you made mate

My question was about the math not about culture

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John_Vattic t1_iyc8ya7 wrote

Nothing at all makes the French person wrong, if the math adds up. I'm not talking about culture at all, it's just an example, like launching a rocket mentioned earlier in the thread. You seem a little angry, you ok?

To put it another way, forget about the equation. The "required" answer to launch the rocket in the example at the start of this thread is 7, not 9. Could we conceivably write and read math in a different order? Yeah absolutely, but if we write math the same and two people read it differently, then there's too much rocket fuel and it explodes on launch. That's why we have a standard for reading back these equations so that we can all get to the same answer.

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