Problem Solved: SADMEP with a negative solution

It’s great to have readers engage with my work, even if the feedback is, in a way, negative.

When I posted the solution to the practice equation at the end of PEMDAS Gets Lost, my calculus teacher from high school immediately said it’s WRONG.

I wouldn’t say it’s wrong, but it is true that there are two solutions. Students just aren’t expected to find the second one until 7th grade when they start performing operations with negative numbers.

Thinking about this helped me clarify my mission with my first book. When I wrote it, I had in mind the many 6th graders I taught who needed to master the 6th grade math standards but who were also reading below grade level. My vision was that they would read this book with their younger siblings while playing teacher. Is this realistic or am I too much of an idealist? I don’t know. Either way, I didn’t want to overwhelm young readers, and I wasn’t writing for older ones - at least not yet. (For the same reason, I didn’t use an exponent larger than two.)

And yet, if YOU are in 7th grade or above, I’m glad you read my book! And I want you to have the complete answer to that second example in the back. So, here it is, in electric pink paint.

Who knows, there may be a book about operations with integers in the future for Math Is Nuts. For now, I have decided to focus on earlier lessons, and the order of operations is a really crucial one.