this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Notation without a definition of what notation you're using is always going to be ambiguous.
If I wrote
6 9 * 6 9 + +
You wouldn't know what that is, until I told you it was reverse polish notation, then you would know it resolves to 69 and does the same operations as the original equation.
You're right, nobody defined the base of the numbers either. Come to think of it, what makes you think that those are numbers at all? That's nothing but a random arrangement of pixels. I mean, who am I to tell you how to interpret the photons reaching your retina? You're nothing but excitations in the electric fields in my neurons, anyways.
I adore structure of your comment!
Its not that there's no definition for the notation, but if you fall back to commonly held definitions, there is divergence in common definitions without the parenthesis. Plenty of calculators, especially old ones, don't respect PEMDAS, so the so by adding brackets your expression is going to fit the intended operations in more commonly used systems than had you left the brackets out.
I also do think its a bit more readable as your eyes are initially drawn to the first operation, you can start evaluating expressions without even parsing the rest of the equation, or you can just block out that entire chunk when you start looking at how many terms are in the equation. That's subjective though, so to each their own.