That’s cool, tricky ain’t it?
Yes....considering I'm thinking about changing my mind again after reading a post at
physics forums discussing the very same problem. A dude there has a very convincing argument that:
The general consensus among math people is that "multiplication by juxtaposition" (that is, multiplying by just putting things next to each other, rather than using the "×" sign) indicates that the juxtaposed values must be multiplied together before processing other operations.
This is strengthened by a link at
ask dr. math that provides a broken link to the American Mathematical Society (AMS) as a source.
Sure wish the link wasn't broken....but heck....I think I'm going back to my original argument.