Zagorath,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

Even Wolfram Alpha makes a point of restating your input to show how it’s being interpreted

This is definitely the best thing to do. It’s what Casio calculators do, according to those videos I linked.

My main point is that even though there is theoretically an ambiguity there, the way it would be interpreted in the real world, by mathematicians working by hand (when presented in a way that people aren’t specifically on the lookout for a “trick”) would be overwhelmingly in favour of juxtaposition being evaluated before division. Maybe I’m wrong, but the examples given in those videos certainly seem to point towards the idea that people performing maths at a high level don’t even think twice about it.

And while there is a theoretical ambiguity, I think any tool which is operating counter to how actual mathematicians would interpret a problem is doing the wrong thing. Sort of like a dictionary which decides to take an opinionated stance and say “people are using the word wrong, so we won’t include that definition”. Linguists would tell you the job of a dictionary should be to describe how the word is used, not rigidly stick to some theoretical ideal. I think calculators and tools like Wolfram Alpha should do the same with maths.

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