What's more fun than a barrel of monkeys? Solving equations using order of operations!

     Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally! Actually, there is no "Aunt Sally" but you'll wish there was so you could thank her for making your math troubles vanish into thin air. This is a mnemonic device which will help you solve all your tricky order of operations math conundrums. So how does it help? Glad you asked.
P lease- Parentheses
E xcuse- Exponents
M y- Multiplication
D ear- Division
A unt- Addition
S ally- Subtraction
     These are the steps you will use in this particular order to solve a problem when there are multiple operations to be used within a problem. If you do not use "PEMDAS" you will without doubt come to the wrong solution to your problem. Using PEMDAS, you will solve 3+2x3=? with the correct answer of 6. If you solve left to right as when reading, you will get the wrong answer of 15.
     And with that, prepare to dazzle and amaze your friends at parties and special events.
Let's say we have to solve this mysterious problem:
(3+4)-(7-3x2)=?
Well, we solve parentheses first.
(3+4)=7
But what about (7-3x2)
Ok, we solve the multiplication part before the subtraction part like so:
3x2=6
Now we have
7-6=1
That leaves us with the simplified problem of
7-1=6
Ta da! Thank you, you've been a great audience. I'll be here all week.

What?!? You're ready to try? Alright, have at it!

ROCKIN' MATH GAME ---> Math Frog Order of Operations game
KILLER ORDER OF OPERATIONS VIDEO  ----->

Embarassed old lady photo: Corbis Photos Add to Lightbox RF Royalty Free

Math's Uniting Powers

"A yupana (Quechua for "counting tool") is a calculator that was used by the Incas. Researchers believe that calculations were based on Fibonacci numbers to minimize the number of necessary grains per field.^[1]"


The Fibonacci Sequence is really an elegant pattern building upon itself by adding a given number to it's preceding number in the sequence. The sequence can begin with any number but generally beginning with 0, 1, 1. 0+1=1, 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8 and so on and so forth creating the pattern 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21...

BEAUTIFUL FIBONACCI VIDEO -----> The Fibonacci Sequence

 It is amazing to me how math is the undisputed universal language, tying together different cultures, periods in history that are hundreds, even thousands of years apart, varying levels of technological sophistication and advancements, as well as the enduring quest of humankind for understanding of the order of things. To think that the Fibonacci sequence is found naturally occurring in places such as the makeup of nautilus shells and  petal organization of flowers, and was recognized and mastered by humans is, to me, a testament to the importance of mathematics and it's influence of the world both around us and in us.

Photo and quote found on Wikipedia from http://www.quipus.it/english/Andean%20Calculators.pdf Holder of the copyright grants permission for use by anyone as it is released into public domain.

Video found on YouTube

Photo on file from Wikipedia Commons.

Early Counting Systems

While going over my notes regarding early counting systems, I was really amazed how many symbols it took to notate numbers in some societies. I was wondering how in the world people managed to put up with it as long as they probably did, being that so many symbols were needed to be used. As I got a little further in my notes, I came to the section regarding the reading and writing of numbers. For example, to write out in long hand 32,157, one would have to write Thirty-two thousand, one-hundred fifty-seven. That's 41 characters, including hyphens and commas. I was a little hard on the Egyptians for having notated it such as they had(I use symbol substitution) ###$$%^^^^^&&&&&&&. That's only 18 characters. Now, luckily we have our universal numeric system in place to save us the time of writing numbers out long hand, but it just struck me that if we didn't have that luxury, perhaps the Egyptian system would look mighty quick and convenient.
COOL COUNTING VIDEO -----> Egyptian couting simmilar to modern computer's computation?

                                                                             


While on the subject of ancient counting systems, I looked up Mayan counting systems. I have always been facinated by the Mayan society and have taken a lot of Cultural Anthropology classes which delt with the numeric system, but this video really gets in depth dealing with the organizing into the different placecolumns relating to the base 60 table used. It's pretty fast paced, but it's a good visual as to how Mayans counted using a physical representation of the items counted using beans and a grooved clay tablet.
MORE COOL COUNTING---->Mayan Abacus

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.