[SeaHawkFan]

For those of you who claim you can multiply and divide in any order, consider that if you multiply 2 and 12 first, you get 24. If you then divide 48 by 24, you get 2.

Therefore, using your own logic, an answer of 2 is just as correct as 288.

After all isn’t ab = ba?

All you 288ers are simply wrong.

[SoothingDave]

For those of you who claim you can multiply and divide in any order

Nobody says that. Many, many people have posted the order of operations. Multiplication and division have equal precedence and are evaluated left-to-right.

Those are the rules.

Follow them and see what answer you get.

[SoothingDave]

Are all of the rules of order posted on the internet wrong? Should they be:

Parentheses (inside)
Parentheses (any multiplication outside the parens, as long as they didn’t explicitly use a multiplication symbol)
Exponents
Mult and divide
Add and sub

[grateful]

This is not an algebraic equation. An algebraic equation would include at least one variable. There is not a variable in sight. Thus, the distributive property of multiplication will not be used and order of operations would be followed.

Thus... 48/2(9+3) = 48/2*(9+3)

By order of operations...

48/2*(12)
24*12 = 288