pemdas
Original: pemdas on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Title: PEMDAS:
A USEFUL MNEMONIC FOR ORDER OF OPERATIONS.
A two-column table mapping the PEMDAS letters to deliberately wrong, oddly-renamed operations:
POWERS | x^y
ENCLOSURES | ( )
MERGES | x + y
DIFFERENCES | x - y
AREAS | x · y
SECTIONS | x/y
(Joke: the words have been swapped so the first letters still spell P-E-M-D-A-S, but "Powers" now leads, "Enclosures" replaces Parentheses, "Merges" replaces Addition, "Differences" replaces Subtraction, "Areas" replaces Multiplication, and "Sections" replaces Division — a mnemonic that no longer matches the actual order of operations.)
Votey:
I CHALLENGE YOU TO DO BETTER. HOT TIP: P = PRODUCT, POWER PLUS PROPORTION
A USEFUL MNEMONIC FOR ORDER OF OPERATIONS.
A two-column table mapping the PEMDAS letters to deliberately wrong, oddly-renamed operations:
POWERS | x^y
ENCLOSURES | ( )
MERGES | x + y
DIFFERENCES | x - y
AREAS | x · y
SECTIONS | x/y
(Joke: the words have been swapped so the first letters still spell P-E-M-D-A-S, but "Powers" now leads, "Enclosures" replaces Parentheses, "Merges" replaces Addition, "Differences" replaces Subtraction, "Areas" replaces Multiplication, and "Sections" replaces Division — a mnemonic that no longer matches the actual order of operations.)
Votey:
I CHALLENGE YOU TO DO BETTER. HOT TIP: P = PRODUCT, POWER PLUS PROPORTION
Alt text
An SMBC comic titled "PEMDAS: A useful mnemonic for order of operations." Below the title is a two-column table that lists six handwritten labels matched to math expressions: POWERS / x^y; ENCLOSURES / ( ); MERGES / x + y; DIFFERENCES / x - y; AREAS / x times y; SECTIONS / x divided by y. The joke is that each operation has been given a wrong but cleverly chosen name so the first letters still spell P-E-M-D-A-S, even though they no longer describe the real order of operations. Votey aftercomic: handwritten text reading "I challenge you to do better. Hot tip: P = product, power plus proportion."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.