>>I think this is what I mentioned in my other reply, wasn't it? I just want to see if I was right. You do the division first (treat it as a single number - a fraction).
>
>I finally broke down, swallowed my pride, and asked a former coworker who is an actuary. This was his response:
>

>The phrase to remember is “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally,” although the technical term is the mathematical 
>“order of operations” (if you do a google).  Order of Operations defines the “order” in which you do the calcs.  The 
>phrase above is a memory aid:
>
>P = Do items in Parathesis first (although I’m not sure the 6th grade has done this yet so the students can ignore this step).
>E = Do Exponents next (again, not sure if they’ve covered this yet).
>M & D = Then do all Multiplication and Division working left to right
>A & S = Then Addition and Subtraction working left to right
>
>So, in your example below:
>
>-24 / 4 x -2 would be, working left to right…(-24 / 4) which equals -6, then multiplied by -2, for an answer of 12.
>
>Regarding the negatives and multiplication, you listed all the right rules.  The key is using PEMDAS to break the problem 
>down into steps...all multiplication/division, before doing addition/subtraction.  I suspect the left-to-right idea will 
>help out a lot.
>

Fox will give you the correct answer, as long as you insert * where multiplications are implied i.e.

-24/4(-2)

is the same as 

-24/4*(-2)

so,

?-24/4*(-2) ==> 12

Now all you have to do is figure out *why* it's 12. Your buddy gives a pretty good explanation.

I find it interesting that people were taught various acronyms and mnemonics to remember order of precedence. In my mathematical "formative years" I was working first with a slide rule, then with an HP-29C RPN calculator, so I just know it "in my bones".