Math was never my long suit, but I was able to work out the correct solution, using the order of operations as taught to me in school. and for good measure:
More modern students, having been taught FailMath in the Leftist schools can't even count the number of fingers they have on their toes.
You don't need to understand the order of operations when your career is pushing the button that has a picture of a Big Mac, Idiocracy is a documentary transported back from the future. They don't need Terminators.
True enough, they can operate the termination switch on their own. Ol' Mr. Shea, one of my arithmetic teachers insisted that working from the inside out was the only way to get a correct answer. This flies in the face of new math. Well, I consistently say that the old ways work when the new breed gets egg on its face.
Ain't no Schoolin better then Old Schoolin I always say! All of life's questions can be solved by Math if you know how! Hell, I even learned to do Trig in my head, and I actually use it now and then, Don't need no pencil, just my booger hook to press the bang switch once I have math'ed it out!
I go to drive thru burger joints all the time and give them the correct change plus a dollar,, just for the chits and giggles of watching them figure out what's going on. Usually,, my burger just gets cold .
90% of my business is cash and carry, every year I hire temp seasonal help. It gets harder and harder to find young people that can make change. One of test in hiring is "I am buying a sandwich that cost $4.50, I give you a $5 bill and 2 quarters. How much change do you give me back?" Most stand there with a blank look on their face, fighting the urge to pull their phone out of their pocket to figure it out. On the flip side the wireless credit card terminals are no challenge at all to most of them. Something I have observed is that the kids I hire from the Amish and home school Community all can make change of any combinations without putting much thought into it but struggle with the CC Terminals. While the public school kids are the opposite. I finally had to break down about 5 years back and buy calculators and put one in each cash box and demand that the really smart college kids use them for every transaction. Can't let them use their phones because they get distracted instantly and wander off like Zombies staring at the screens oblivious to everything but whatever crap is on the screen.
Back in late 1950's used to have to state if Polish or Reverse Polish Notation, some computers and math people used one system and some used other. Never really did figure it out,just found out what worked on our Burroughs mainframe programed in Balgol on punch cards and ran on punched tape and Ampex 1 in tape recorders. An off the wall complex pdf explains some of what was going on. APL (programming language) - Wikipedia At that time there were dozens of computer companies and multiple programing systems that compiled, translated into machine language, your problems and there were many different approaches, then IBM, Microsoft, etc, dominated the fields and 90 % of the companies and 98 % of the innovation in the field died. In the process we went from total domination of the field, to sub contracting it out to other nations. Thus we end up with NASA having problems with their heavy lift rocket, a few years behind schedule among other problems, and using 20 year old left over engines based on a 50 year old design, modified from the V2 engines by the best Germans we could capture or hire. Somewhere along the line I morphed from computers into repairing power tools, never made much money, but it has been an excellent life and I haven't been in a cubicle for 50 years and most of the people who thought I was crazy for not pushing for the big bucks have been dead for 20 years. While not the best way to survive, a lot can be said for working with your hands and being able to ignore 98 % of what the modern successful person puts up with, went from ulcers to hot sauce on my chili and never really looked back..
I have an HP calculator that uses RPN. Faster and easier. It let me keep up on physics, math, and other STEM lectures as I would validate my professors real time.
RPN opened a whole new way to use hand held calculators. I got one when the HP unit was over 300 bux. Well worth it in time saved back then in the science and engineering classes.
I went with the TI59 Programmable, and wrote Programs for all the complicated stuff.... Still have it in my briefcase...
