How old is Bodmas?

[john2443]

A friend was having trouble with one of those puzzles (if 2 chickens plus 3 bananas = 43, what is 3 peaches + 2 eggs x 1 MX5) .

Neither him (age 61) or me (63) can remember being taught BODMAS at school, I've only known about it in the last few years when people started putting stupid puzzles on Facebook, AFAIR we were taught to put brackets round the bits you wanted to do first, and I still do because I don't trust compters to do it correctly - in fact we had an issue at work (IT company) where the programmer didn't put brackets because he assumed BODMAS would work and when I tested it I found it gave the wrong answer and although neither of us thought he should have to put brackets, he had to put them to make it work properly.

So, the question for you is - were you taught Bodmas at school and how old are you?

[mmm-five]

51 and remember being taught it some time in primary school.

[sociopath]

I'm 59 and a half (important to be accurate) and I was taught BODMAS as part of O level maths

[mickyh7]

Yes, taught at School.
In the 70's.
I'm 61 now.
Used to pass exams only.
It served me not a bit, as I left School and jumped straight to a Calculator for speed!

[silentbrown]

Yes. Also in my 60s, programming computers for 45 years and I've never heard of a programming language that didn't cope correctly with operator precedence rules.

The confusion often comes because programming languages have a wider range of operators than the usual DMAS ones, so precedence rules can be complex.

Also BODMAS is often misunderstood. 5-5+3 is (5-5)+3, because addition and subtraction have the same precedence and are just read left to right.

[GAjon]

Come on, it’s too early for Bodmas we’ve only just had Easter.

[Puggit]

It's called BIDMAS these days (same method though).

[blingybongy]

58 not taught at school, just had to Google it. Never had reason to use it.

[glenrobbo]

42

[Glosphil]

I'm 74 & was taught BODMAS at secondary school in 1958.
I remember as the maths teacher became my father-in-law in 1969 & we had many discussions regarding the teaching of maths.
He was taught it in the 1930s.

According to Google it was introduced before 1900.

Edited by Glosphil on Wednesday 7th April 09:36

[paua]

glenrobbo said:

42

6x9

[GroundEffect]

33 and of course taught it.

But it's also not correct 100% of the time

[Maximus_Meridius101]

I’m 47 this year, and although we were taught the order that things in a maths problem should be tackled, it was never actually specifically given the term BIDMAS / BODMAS. Because of the way my brain works, it would have helped me to have a simple acronym to remember it by, when I was at school. Although this very simple maths problem could be easily mis calculated if you follow the BODMAS rules. 3 x (2 + 4) + 5(squared). The answer is 43, but it would be easy to arrive at the answer being 93, if you blindly followed ‘BODMAS’ and didn’t think it through carefully.

Edited by Maximus_Meridius101 on Wednesday 7th April 09:59

[otolith]

How can you possibly be taught basic algebra without understanding operator precedence? We were taught it, though not with an acronym.

[SCEtoAUX]

"Has he passed the test? He gives the test".

David Brent

[Johnspex]

68 and I was taught it as BOMDAS.

[silentbrown]

Maximus_Meridius101 said:

Although this very simple maths problem could be easily mis calculated if you follow the BODMAS rules. 3 x (2 + 4) + 5(squared). The answer is 43, but it would be easy to arrive at the answer being 93, if you blindly followed ‘BODMAS’ and didn’t think it through carefully.

How???

3 x (2 + 4)+ 5⁽²⁾

BODMAS - Brackets - evaluate anything in brackets.
3 x 6+ 5²

BODMAS Order: sort the square
3 x 6 + 25

BODMAS Division/Multuiplication
18 + 25

BODMAS Addition/Subtraction
43

Edited by silentbrown on Wednesday 7th April 10:14

[AW111]

I was taught it in the late 60's / early 70's.

I still put redundant brackets in long expressions, just to make them easier to read.

Fun fact : the bloody Windows calculator doesn't follow operator precedence in basic mode!

[CrutyRammers]

silentbrown said:

How???

3 x (2 + 4)+ 5?²?

BODMAS - Brackets - evaluate anything in brackets.
3 x 6+ 5²

BODMAS Order: sort the square
3 x 6 + 25

BODMAS Division/Multuiplication
18 + 25

BODMAS Addition/Subtraction
43

Edited by silentbrown on Wednesday 7th April 10:14

Yeah. These "trick" questions are all about people forgetting or wrongly applying BODMAS, not because it's wrong or doesn't always work.

[otolith]

CrutyRammers said:

Yeah. These "trick" questions are all about people forgetting or wrongly applying BODMAS, not because it's wrong or doesn't always work.

They also often use the primary school division operator instead of writing division as fractions - it's hard to misinterpret something like this;