Order of Operations and Equations

What is order of operations and how do you use them in equations?

Let’s start at the beginning.

What is an operation?

An operation means to add, subtract, multiply, divide, squaring, etc.

When you see something like this:

What part do you calculate first?

Do you start from the left and go to the right?

Or do you go from the right to the left?

If you calculate them in the wrong order – you will get the wrong answer.

Order of operations rules

The rules are:

1.    Parentheses first

2.    Powers and roots before multiply, divide, add or subtract

3.    Multiply or divide before (left to right)

4.    Add or subtract (left to right)

When there are many multiplications and divisions, do them from left to right:

How do you remember all this? Here’s how: