The convention on + * ^ seemed to be tailored (Taylored?:-) for convenience when writing polynomials. The following is what Ken said about it in 1966: http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/EvalOrder.htm
----- Original Message ----- From: Dan Bron <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, July 31, 2010 8:23 Subject: [Jprogramming] Order of operations To: 'Programming forum' <[email protected]> > How did the current mathematical order of operations (PEMDAS) > arise? > > > > Why does it always seem that the more powerful operators also > have the > higher precedence? Is it so that expressions don't explode > by default (e.g. > 3*4^5*6 would have a very different value if * was higher > precedence than > ^). If we introduce a new operator in the chain + * ^, > would it necessarily > also have the highest precedence? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
