[Jprogramming] Order of operations

[Roger Hui]

The convention on + * ^ seemed to be tailored 
(Taylored?:-) for convenience when writing polynomials.
The following is what Ken said about it in 1966:
http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/EvalOrder.htm



----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Bron <j at bron.us>
Date: Saturday, July 31, 2010 8:23
Subject: [Jprogramming] Order of operations
To: 'Programming forum' <programming at jsoftware.com>

> How did the current mathematical order of operations (PEMDAS) 
> arise?  
> 
>  
> 
> Why does it always seem that the more powerful operators also 
> have the
> higher precedence?  Is it so that expressions don't explode 
> by default (e.g.
> 3*4^5*6 would have a very different value if * was higher 
> precedence than
> ^).  If we introduce a new operator in the chain + * ^, 
> would it necessarily
> also have the highest precedence?