ACK Business Mathematics - Fall 2019

Order of Calculation
Work out the answer to the following calculation:

5+7x3–6÷2+4
Did you get one of the following answers?: 27, 19, 14, 37, 35

The only correct answer is 27. If you got this, well done, you did the calculation in the
correct order. If you got any of the other answers you need some practice.

You can see, from the above example, that there are various different answers depending
on which way round you do the calculation. It is important that there is only one answer
and so there is a specific way round that you must perform calculations.

Remember: Brackets (any brackets should be done 1st)

Indices (next any powers) (See lesson 2 for help)
Division (next any ÷ or x)
Multiplication
Add (finally just work from Left to Right doing + or -)
Subtract
This is often just referred to as “BIDMAS” and is the “order of operation”.

All calculation should be done in the order described above. i.e. deal with any brackets
first, then any powers. Multiply and divide should be done next (from left to right) then,
once you are left with just add and subtract, work from left to right.

Let’s look at the original calculation again:

5+7x3– 6÷2+4
There are no brackets or powers, so move onto divide and multiply:

5+7x3– 6÷2+4

Now we have: 5 + 21 – 3 + 4
We have done everything else so now we can just go from left to right performing the add
and subtract:

5 + 21 – 3 + 4 = 27

1
 ACK Business Mathematics - Fall 2019

A quick reminder about powers:

A power tells you to multiply a number by itself a certain number of times.

e.g. 32 = 3 ×3= 9 (n.b. this is not 3 x 2)

33 = 3 ×3 ×3= 27
24 = 2 ×2 ×2×2= 16
25 = 2 ×2 ×2×2 × 2= 32

We will look at powers in more detail in lesson 2.

Examples of using BIDMAS:

• Calculate 𝟕 − (𝟑 + 𝟐) × 𝟖

Brackets: 7− 5 ×8

X or ÷ 7 − 40
+ or - = −𝟑𝟑
(left to right)

• Calculate 𝟓 × (𝟕 − 𝟒) + 𝟑𝟐 − 𝟐

Brackets: 5 × 3 + 32 − 2

Indices: 5×3+9−2

X or ÷ 15 + 9 − 2
+ or - = 𝟐𝟐
(left to right)

• Calculate 𝟏𝟔 + (𝟓 − 𝟐)𝟐 × 𝟐

Brackets: 16 + 32 × 2

Indices: 16 + 9 × 2

X or ÷ 16 + 18
+ or - = 𝟑𝟒
(left to right)

2
 ACK Business Mathematics - Fall 2019

Practice Sheet 1: Order of Calculation

Work out the following:

7+4x3–8 =

5 + 27  9 – 6 =

22 – 12  4 – 5 =

5x(8 – 6) + 3 x 12 =

3 x 15 + 28  7 =

6 x 5 + 15 x 3 =

3 x 3 – 22 =

(15  5) + 33 x 5 + 2 =

27 – 3 x 9 =

5 x (8 – 3) – 7 x 0 =

(7 - 3) x (4 + 1) – 12 =

42 x 8 – 8 x 42 =

5 x 32 + 7- 2 =

3 + 42 – (1 + 2)2 =

(3 – 1) + 4 x 32 – 5 =