>It's quite frightening the no. of people who don't know this. When I taught Excel to secretarial students, some of whom had been using it in work for years, every class I'd ask them the answer to, like, 6 + 3 * 4, and 9 out of 10 would answer 36.
>
>BTW, I'd teach 'em more in 1 day than they'd gleaned in 2 years' use ;-)

Talking about Excel... I was working with a guy who called me to help him out. Remember Lotus 123? Well he asked me to help him with an excel problem. He couldn't figure out how to move a range. Apparently he'd been trying to figure this out all morning. He said to me (and this is an exact quote), "I know how to do this in Lotus 123, but I can't figure out how to do it in Excel." I was almost too stunned to speak.

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>
>>We too learned it as BODMAS, but the 'O' was 'Orders' (as in Orders of magnitude) rather than 'Of'.
>>
>>>BODMAS, or BOMDAS is from school. The "of" is to remind people that it's another word for "multiplied by". Simple and lacking expo, I know, but JJ's example didn't have that.
>>>I later formulated something like NEPOMASTiC for my Excel students Can't remember what all for now :-)
>>>
>>>Negation - Exponentiation - Parenth - Of ...
>>>
>>>I'll have to check it out in my course notes.
>>>One thing: I agree that divide should be after multiply, to reduce decimal rounding errors on big calculations.
>>>
>>>>I was taught the order of solving is BEMDAS - Brackets - Exponents - Multiply - Divide - Add - Subtract
>>>>
>>>>>The rule of evaluation of equations is BODMAS:
>>>>>
>>>>> Brackets - Of - Divide - Multiply - Add - Subtract
>>>>>
>>>>>So 12
>>>>>
>>>>>>

>>>>>>-24/4(-2)
>>>>>>

>>>>>>Is it:
>>>>>>

>>>>>>-6(-2) = 12
>>>>>>

>>>>>>Or is it:
>>>>>>

>>>>>>-24/-8 = 3
>>>>>>