Editing Openai/68a11068-3fe8-8007-bd18-674462ff2b41 (section)

===== - School rule (PEMDAS): Multiplication is multiplication, whether implicit or explicit — equal precedence with division. =====
* Algebra convention (some teachers, some textbooks): Implicit multiplication (juxtaposition) is “tighter,” to reflect the idea that symbols written close together should be grouped.
* Programming convention: All multiplications are equal, left-to-right with division.

So the “why” is cultural, not mathematical. Different fields settled on slightly different conventions to reduce their kind of confusion.

✅ Big takeaway:
* Implicit multiplication feels like it “takes precedence” because juxtaposition has a history of being treated as a single object (like 2x2x2x or πr2\pi r^2πr2), while explicit × is just another operator.
* In real math writing, this is never left ambiguous — people use fraction bars or parentheses to avoid these very debates.

Would you like me to show you the historical evolution of this — from handwritten algebra (where implicit binding really was “stronger”) → to calculators/programming (where it isn’t)?