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nemplsman t1_iyby6xr wrote

Reply to comment by Way2Foxy in ELI5 why we first multiply, then add by TheManNamedPeterPan

There seems to be disagreement on this, and not just by me (see my sources).

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Way2Foxy t1_iyc1lfu wrote

I don't think we disagree that doing multiplication prior to addition makes sense intuitively.

My point is that there's nothing forcing us to do it that way, and we could have a well defined system where we add and subtract first. If you disagree with that, then fair enough.

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Kalirren t1_iycbj65 wrote

No, there -is- something forcing us to do it this way: * distributes over + but + doesn't distribute over *. So if you want to write the distributive property a*(b+c) = a*b+a*c you don't have to use ANY parentheses if you do * before +. And there's no reason why you would try to do it the other way because a+(b*c) != (a+b) * (a+c).

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