My public school education on pemdas is that for multiplication/division and addition/subtraction, you do them on order from left to right. Doing it that way gets me 16, which I believe to be right, but I'm also very bad at math. The way you had explained is also technically correct, if you do the multiplication out of order. Now that I think about it, you could solve for the parentheses by multiplying 2+2 by two, giving you 8/8 quicker and still yielding 1. I'm now having more doubts about my math capabilities, both are right, but I know that's wrong, I just don't know why

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago

you could solve for the parentheses by multiplying 2+2 by two, giving you 8/8 quicker and still yielding 1. I’m now having more doubts about my math capabilities

No, that's the correct way to do it, as per The Distributive Law.

both are right

No, only 1 is right. If you get 16 then you did division before finishing solving brackets.