| Abstract: | This study investigates how well 381 prospective elementary, early childhood, and special education majors solved four arithmetic problems that required using the order of operations. Self‐reported data show these students to be relatively able mathematically and confident in their ability, with no substantial dislike of mathematics. The percentage of answers that were incorrect that is attributable to order of operations ranged from 21.7% to 78.5%. Overall, fewer than half the subjects answered more than two questions correctly. Of those subjects who performed multiplication before addition, which indicates some knowledge of order of operations, 30.9% performed addition before subtraction and 38.0% performed multiplication before division rather than from left to right, which suggests that instead of using the correct order of operations, these students used the common mnemonic PEMDAS or “Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally “literally, performing multiplication before division and performing addition before subtraction, rather than from left‐to‐right. Furthermore, 78.5% of subjects used the incorrect order of operations to compute ?32. |
