The What's, Why's, and When's of Order of Operations

I. What is the Order of Operations?

Imagine driving your vehicle to go to work or school. Suddenly, you start hearing
a loud constant noise from the back side of
your vehicle. You park your car to the side of
the road to check what is happening and you
find out your vehicle has a flat tire. You must
get to work or school as soon as possible, so
there is no choice to wait for help. You decide
to change the flat tire. List the steps you must
take to change the flat tire of your vehicle.
Remember about safety!

List steps to change a flat tire:

a. Get the tools

b. Jack up the car
c. Loosen the screws
d. Take out the screws
e. Change the tire
f. Put screws back on
g. Tighten the screws
h. Put tire back on
i. Take car of jack

This example illustrates the concept of order of operations. Explain in your own
words what the order of operations is.

Basically the order of operations here is to change the tire by Get the tools

Jack up the car, Loosen the screws, Take out the screws, Change the tire, Put screws
back on, Tighten the screws, Put tire back on, Take car of jack.
 II. Why we need the Order of Operations?

We need order of operations so that everyone gets the same answer.

Read the following comic strip:

Based on the comic strip, explain why we need the order of operations.

We need order of operations so that everyone gets the same answer and so that
there is no confusion. Also we need order of operations so there can be a right answer
and not many different answers.

III. When do we use Order of Operations?

When we have a math problem that has more than one operation.

Write an expression that simplifies to 3. Your expression must

contain exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, and at least one
set of parenthesis. Explain the process you would use to simplify the expression.
Use Equation Editor to write and simplify the expression.

1-4×11+1-1÷1

-3-1+1÷1

3+1-1÷1

4-1÷1

4-1

=3