Possible Duplicate:
What is 48÷2(9+3)?
Please, look at the picture?
Which calculator shows true result and how to prove achieved result?
Possible Duplicate:
What is 48÷2(9+3)?
Please, look at the picture?
Which calculator shows true result and how to prove achieved result?
Despite every personal belief, a notation like $a/b(c+d)$ is ambiguous. At school I learned that this should be $$ \frac{a}{b}(c+d), $$ but even in research papers somebody could read $$ \frac{a}{b(c+d)}. $$
The reason why calculators are giving different results is because one is calculating,
$$\frac{6}{2\cdot(2+1)} = 1$$
while the other is calculating,
$$\frac{6}{2}\cdot(2+1) = 9$$
Depending on what you want to calculate, you could obtain different answers.
when two operations have same precedence, then the operations are done from left to right.So here, division is done first and then multiplication.This is just a convention.Without this, this expression is ambiguous.