I really don’t think you’re wrong. I think PEMDAS was invented as a learning tool, meanwhile a rational (heh) justification would be that the implicit multiplication must be on the same level of the fraction. People are taking PEMDAS learning aid as a hard rule, neglecting the standard notation that predates it.
If you write out a proper fraction, with numerator and denominator, you would have to write 8(2+2) / 2 to get 16. 2(2+2) could only be written on the denominator - you can’t split implicit multiplication across the fraction.
Meanwhile, if you put an explicit multiplication into the calculator, then you will get 16.
I really don’t think you’re wrong. I think PEMDAS was invented as a learning tool, meanwhile a rational (heh) justification would be that the implicit multiplication must be on the same level of the fraction. People are taking PEMDAS learning aid as a hard rule, neglecting the standard notation that predates it.
If you write out a proper fraction, with numerator and denominator, you would have to write 8(2+2) / 2 to get 16. 2(2+2) could only be written on the denominator - you can’t split implicit multiplication across the fraction.
Meanwhile, if you put an explicit multiplication into the calculator, then you will get 16.