Can't we just agree that it's a stupid way to write an equation and move on?
I've done years of maths that here equals to the 5th years of maths uni plus some extras, and even if I have lost most of my knowledge in maths, that's exactly how I was feeling reading this thread, because it's not about maths but just interpretation of something nobody writes like that in maths. I'm sure even my old math teacher who was a killer wouldn't be so sure of himself about the answer.
Because the way it is written is too far from how you actually write it on your own sheet of paper. It's more an IT problem. Of course we havenn't waited computers to write stuff in a single line, but who cares.
On a single string, no one would ever write that out of a context, because he would know that the way it is interpreted depends on the program reading it.
That's why during my electrical engineering grande ecole year, I was used to write this sort of string clearer by a bigger use of parenthesis to be sure my formula would be interpreted the same way whichever is the program reading it, cause no one is following an official rule that it should follow. The example of the different TI models clearly shows that.
@JeffTD : I have never heard of anything saying that 2(9+3) is different from 2*(9+3), maybe it's an IT rule, but in my years of maths, never made a difference.
So for me, there is still an ambiguity, because not writing the "*" would imply 2 and (9+3) shold be calculated before, the same as if I had writen :
48 / BISPACEBIGSPACEBIGSPACE 2*(9+3)
but it's not conventional either. It would just be a convention between me and my mate sitting next to me to make him understand it a natural way.
In the end, I think there is no "real" solution, excepted if someone can find somewhere an official rule saying something about it, but I doubt there is one.
