OK, thoughts? Concerns? Did you get negative one? Did you get nine? Yeah, me too.
But we’re both wrong, and we’re wrong because of an acronym. Apparently, one common response to solving this problem is…. drumroll, please… PEMDAS. “PEMDAS, duh!” they laughed. Surely you remember PEMDAS? Dudes, I don’t think I knew PEMDAS to begin with, but apparently, it stands for Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally — or, the slightly more helpful version, Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction, which is generally the “correct” order of operations used to solve math problems. But not in this case! Following PEMDAS will get you negative one, which is incorrect.
