BODMAS what does it stand for he asked?
Simple, we all learnt it in Primary school. Brackets, Of, Division, Multiplcation, Addition, Subtraction.
Turns out that all of us in the group had different opinions of what the 'O' meant. It actually means 'Powers of'. That was his first point against teaching BODMAS, that the teachers who teach it don't actually know what it fully means.
Personally I don't really care that I didn't know the correct meaning of the 'O'. In primary school I didn't learn powers of. In High school you are already familiar with the order of operations and when they bring in powers of you just learn it when to do them as another rule.
Another point that he brought up was that BODMAS leads children to believe that division has to be done before multiplcation and addition before subtraction when the D and M are interchangeable as are the A and S.
So why not just teach the order of operations and forget all about BODMAS or BOMDAS, BODMSA or any other variation?
So you should be able to see his point that BODMAS seems very complicated and tricky. I think that he is justified in his point of view but I don't think that not teaching BODMAS is the way to go though I would certainly be open to explaining the order of operations in a different way to my future students because after all I acknowledge that not all students will be able to learn the same way.
Thats the last I want to talk about BODMAS at this point though the topic may come up at another time you never know.