Originally Posted by mathman
2(...) The 2 adjacent to the parentheses means 2 times (...). Explicitly written it's 2*(...)

The (2+2) "parentheses object" is 4.

So written out it's 8 / 2 * 4.

These operations are on the same footing, so are evaluated in order, left to right. 8/2 = 4, so now we have 4 * 4 = 16.

An earlier poster declaring "2 times 4" to be in the denominator effectively inserts parentheses that weren't there, as in 8/(2*4), or 8/(2(2+2)).


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