Is PEMDAS actually correct?

Written by Editorial Team | Last Updated: August 2026

The standard mathematical acronym PEMDAS—standing for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction—is a universally taught convention to help students remember the order of operations, though it can cause confusion regarding multiplication and division or addition and subtraction. Because multiplication and division hold equal priority and are evaluated strictly from left to right, as are addition and subtraction, the underlying rules are mathematically correct when applied with proper left-to-right evaluation.

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