Almost everyone who studied maths at school will at some point have bumped into BIDMAS or its twin, BODMAS.
BIDMAS stands for Brackets, Indices (powers), Division and Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction. BODMAS is identical, except “indices” are called “Order”. Both acronyms tell us the same thing: the order in which to tackle the operators in an equation.
For example, in the sum 1 + 22 - (3 + 2) x 4, we must first evaluate the contents ...