# Is the PEMDAS convention necessary to be compatible with exponent notation?

• Mar 20th 2011, 09:56 PM
lamp23
Is the PEMDAS convention necessary to be compatible with exponent notation?
Is the P E M/D A/S convention necessary to be compatible with exponent notation?

If we write: $2^3 + 7$
then wouldn't it be impossible to reverse the priority of exponents and addition if we use our current notation for exponents?
• Mar 20th 2011, 10:51 PM
Prove It
I don't understand your question - it's very clear that you need to do the exponentiation before the addition...
• Mar 20th 2011, 11:14 PM
lamp23
Quote:

Originally Posted by Prove It
I don't understand your question - it's very clear that you need to do the exponentiation before the addition...

I'm asking if the order of operations convention that we adopt, namely P E M/D A/S, could have been a different convention. It seems possible that we could have adopted a convention of P E A/S M/D i.e. reversing the priority of addition and multiplication so that $4 \times 2+1 = 4 \times 3$.
However, I don't see how we could do something similar with exponents.
• Mar 21st 2011, 01:06 AM
emakarov
Quote:

Is the P E M/D A/S convention necessary to be compatible with exponent notation?
It is not necessary because you can make a convention to do M/D after A/S. However, our notation for exponents does seem to imply that exponentiation has the highest priority.