Oddbean

@b541bfe5 I was curious, so I found my uni textbook. Here it is using solidus (/) instead of obelus (÷) but the result is clearly everything to the right of the symbol is grouped (it would be the denominator in fractional notation). The same is true of the units. (Specifically the Permittivity of free space). This is Physics (5th ed.) by Serway & Beichner, printed 2000. https://cdn.mastdn.ca/media_attachments/files/111/059/458/458/564/156/original/d5403580874b3f47.jpg

@c159b67f Yes, exactly! There seems to have been a conscientious effort made to eliminate this ambiguity in textbooks. I went to school in the previous century. ;) I'm glad to have learned about this mistaken "shorthand" of my day through this viral meme, because otherwise I would still be in the dark.

@b541bfe5 I just don't think it's wrong to take the division symbol (whichever it is) as flattened fractional notation. It's just a little more subtle to explain than BEDMAS so it causes confusion between the different styles. Do university-level textbooks conform fully to BEDMAS now? The math profs I follow on Youtube all follow fractional notation, proofs I see online all follow fractional notation. It seems to me that only relative newcomers to math expressions would dogmatically follow BEDMAS.

@c159b67f According to this mathematician, that practice is antiquated. In his words, "Today this practice is discouraged, and I have never seen a mathematician write an ambiguous expression using the division symbol. Textbooks always have proper parentheses, or they explain what is to be divided. Because mathematical typesetting is much easier today, we almost never see ÷ as a symbol, and instead fractions are written with the numerator vertically above the denominator." https://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2016/08/31/what-is-6%C3%B7212-the-correct-answer-explained/

@c159b67f Note that he also calls the practice of reading ÷ as a fractional notation something that was read "100 years ago". lol, I'm nearing half a century old so that can't be right... I don't know how young this guy is, but that sounds like hyperbole to me. lol.

@b541bfe5 I'm nearing that age and I don't find shorthand fractional notation confusing or ambiguous. But I do agree that it is a different convention from BEDMAS. That doesn't make it wrong or right, just different.

@b541bfe5 @c159b67f Realistically, I haven't seen a ➗symbol since high school. And so while it's probably true that using that symbol to denote fractional notation is antiquated, so is using it at all. The difference may be more about how much of your math education came after high school when literally everything was in fractional notation. Using a ➗but not a ✖️ seems like deliberately mixing notation to be ambiguous.