How to Use The Rule for The Order of Operations to Simplify The Following Expressions (Part 1)

The Order of Operations is always misunderstood by many students. This article will give some examples and steps how to solve the problems that uses Order of Operations to simplify them.

Things You'll Need

• Paper
• Pencil

Instructions

1. 

   The Example problem that we shall use to demnostrate How to use The Rule for The Order of Operations to Simplify is: 2+5[9+3(4-1)]
   First thing to do is to work with the inner most () parenthesis and or [] brackets. Please see the image on the left for better understanding.

2. 

   Let us first work with the expression that is inside of the brackets, 2+5[9+3(3)]. By the Order of Operations we have to multiply 3 by 3 before adding it to 9. Please see the image on the left for better understanding.

3. 

   We now do the Addition that is inside the brackets which is [9+9]=18, and then write the expression as 2+5[18]. Please see the image on the left for better understanding.

4. 

   Before doing the addition, we first Multiply 5 by 18, that is 5[18] = 90.We then add 2 to the product 90 which gives us the answer, 2+90 = 92. Please see the image on the left for better understanding.