[maurile]

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Is there some organization in charge of this?

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I don't think there's an official organization, but all the highschool math teachers and highschool math textbooks that we've encountered so far have given the same response.

Their response was the opposite, however, of the one given by the huge majority of engineers we've sampled.

Also, Google calcluator and MS Excel give one answer while TI-85 gives the opposite answer.

So it appears to be ambiguous.

All of the math teachers, however, say that it's not ambiguous, that it clearly has an unambiguous answer according to the accepted convention for the order of operations. They are sure about this, and I'm inclined to believe them over the engineers who said "I'm not sure, but if I had to guess I'd pick this one" (and got the opposite answer from the one the teachers gave).

I don't want to give the correct (as judged by the teachers who say they're sure) answer away yet. Let's see if anybody in here feels strongly one way or the other.

I can argue either side (although I side with the teachers).