When doing a calculation we don’t just work from the left to the right. Instead, we start with whichever calculation is higher up in the order of operations and do that calculation before any other ones. As always in mathematics, this is best seen through examples.

In these examples and exercises we must also remember that dividing by a fraction is the same as multiplying by its reciprocal.

Examples

Exercise

Let’s complete exercise 10B from page 157 of the textbook:

The answers are below: