Maidir le: Octave and Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

[OCuanachain, Oisin (Oisin)]

Apparently you went to a school using poor textbooks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEMDAS#Mnemonics
I had never heard of PEDMAS before but the above article makes it clear that M 
and D have equal precedence, as do A and S, with operations of equal precedence 
being evaluated from left to right. Thus Octave's behaviour is correct even 
according to this 'PEDMAS' scheme, you were just taught it incorrectly. Guess 
you'd better rewrite your code, and reprimand your former maths teachers.


-----Bunteachtaireacht-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden Thar ceann clustro
Sent: 27 Bealtaine 2011 19:05
To: address@hidden
Subject: Octave and Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

Hello everyone,

I tried doing this operation as a test:

3*4/2*2

Following PEMDAS (Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally), I should get:

3*4 = 12

2*2 = 4

12/4 = 3

But instead, I get 12, because apparently octave is doing 4/2 first, and
then multiplication.

What on earth is octave doing? Apparently, I am not the only person who
thought Octave used PEMDAS (http://tinyurl.com/3rfsk9g, last page). What
order of operations is octave using?

This might seem like such a slight matter but there is a bunch of code I
have to go back and fix now because of this, and I just want to make sure I
know the correct priority of the operations to save myself having to do it
all over again.

Thanks,

-Brad Ridder

--
View this message in context: 
http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Octave-and-Please-Excuse-My-Dear-Aunt-Sally-tp3555977p3555977.html
Sent from the Octave - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
_______________________________________________
Help-octave mailing list
address@hidden
https://mailman.cae.wisc.edu/listinfo/help-octave