Why is it BODMAS?

[Dilbertian]

Is BODMAS something that was agreed upon or imposed in order to make mathematics uniform, or does it have a mathematical reason why it has to be?

I'm asking if there is a mathematical reason for the way we right it down.

No there isn’t.

I definitely knew BODMAS at secondary school but we used the brackets, too.

Now, why did I need to know the BODMAS? :)

It's a convention, but a convention based on mathematical principles. Indices, products and quotients are properties of a number, addition and subtraction refer to movements on the number line.

Yes, but I was wondering what kind of sums I was doing to have got to a point where I needed to know BODMAS. I suppose just complicated arithmetic.

@Dilbertian

Seeing as though we're on Pedant's Corner, 'sums' only refers to addition. In regard to order of operations, you might be looking at accounts that calculate groups of sales or shared payments, which are then subject to a fixed increment, such as a flat tax.

It’s just grammar for maths. The reality of whatever it is you want to calculate would still exist even if we used a different order of operations. Random equations with no context don’t illustrate anything in the same way you can make up grammatically correct nonsensical sentences in language.

I was taught BOMDAS in school and DH was taught BODMAS. I've now retrained as an adult and it is indeed BODMAS!

To add to the confusion, it's PEMDAS in the US.

Yes, the order of operations is the logical way to arrive at the correct answer. It's not random, or merely handy.

This

I'm another who was taught BOMDAS not BODMAS in school!

It was always BIDMAS when I was at school. Then my DC have learned it as BODMAS and I still can't remember what the O stands for even though I look it up every time I come across it. BODMAS will always sound wrong to me.

I was taught BIDMAS way back in the 1970s. It all means the same thing.

When I was taught BODMAS it was brackets, of, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction.

So what is I for in BIDMAS? Has someone said 'indices' earlier in the thread?

The 'O' is for 'orders', not 'of'. 'I' is for 'indices'. Some teachers use BEDMAS, with the 'E' standing for 'exponents.'