Video narration
What do you get when you solve 3 + 4 × 2 from left to right-14? It feels reasonable: three plus four is seven, then seven times two is fourteen. But arithmetic is like following a recipe: the steps have to happen in the right order. The answer is not found by simply moving left to right. BODMAS is the rule that tells you what to do first: Brackets, Orders, Division, Multiplication, Addition, and Subtraction. For this example, multiplication comes before addition. Multiply 4 by 2: 8. Add 3: 3 + 8 equals 11. So 14 is tempting, but it uses the wrong order. Division and multiplication share a level, as do addition and subtraction; ties go from left to right. So, what is 3 + 4 × 2? It's 11: multiply 4 by 2 first, then add 3, because BODMAS tells us the order.