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From my kids' school maths I know this rather as BIDMAS - with the 'I' standing for indices (i.e. powers), which makes more sense, no?

For my own part, I don't remember any fancy acronyms being rolled out to help us remember this stuff when I were a lad. Kids today grumble grumble etc.

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IIRC it was changed in the curriculum at some point, since we had both BODMAS and later BIDMAS. I imagine it was done for the reason you gave, it does make more sense

When I was in school, we only used apostrophe, comma, open and close paren, exclamation point, question mark, dollar sign, and period. Maybe a percent sign in later years. Of course my exposure to computers in those days was watching TV when the announcer took a stack of (punch) cards from a card sorter and called it a computer (UNIVAC IIRC).

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