So, when I heard Gavin complaining about his son's math teacher I thought "Oh is Gavin encountering Common Core??" I realized he has an older child so he must have already been acquainted with this madness.
Common core math is absolute insanity, but it still uses PEMMDAS, so Gavin's son's math teacher is very wrong.
The teacher was right, you simplify what is INSIDE of parentheses first, not the multiplication that comes from any number or variable outside of them. In that instance it came to the same conclusion, but it won't all the time and that's why you follow the order of operations every time. I do think he should have gotten half points for at least doing all the operations correctly even if he went in the wrong order.
his son would NOT have been following PEMDAS if he did it the teacher's way.
You can see in the note the teacher left that it says "I had to take off all 4 points because you started with multiplication instead of exponents." No one would actually use "2(6)" in an expression, they would just put 12. It's obviously put there to trip up the student and reinforce the proper order. And I think it's fair to assume Gavin saying the teacher saying you have to work left to right was him being retarded and making assumptions. Remember his revelation a couple episodes ago that he is actually dumb?
awesome! thanks, I admit, I didn't go back and check it before I posted. hopefully gavin sees that and doesn't go all his dad and call the teacher "paahh thetic" :D