Order of operations - what is 6÷2(1+2) ?

[Mike T.]

I've been following the discussion here with some interest, so I probably ought to declare that I'm firmly in the '1' camp but this is probably only because I group the 2 with the associated brackets,

so I 'see' the expression as;

6
---------
2(2+1)

rather than as;

6
-- (2+1)
2

which may (or may not) be what the author intended.

Before anyone says the answer is obvious, I'd suggest this is only true if you know what convention the author was using when they wrote the expression as a single line.

If this information is missing then it would seem that only thing that is obvious is that expression itself is ambiguous.

Possibly deliberately so. :-)