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The more people who understand that mathematical notation is an agreed-upon convention that isn't set in stone and doesn't follow from the intrinsic nature of mathematics, rather it is agreed-upon differently across the world, sometimes within one university, the sooner we can calm down certain internet threads.
Implied multiplication by juxtaposition: Same priority as explicit multiplication, or higher? There is no old and new. There is no general consensus. TI-83 calculators follow the former, TI-82 calculators the latter, both with the rationale that that's how most users of their calculators would interpret it, presumably in the US.
"I have from time to time tried to find evidence as to what rule has been taught when, and to the best of my knowledge, it has always been somewhat mixed, to the extent it has been taught at all. [ . . . ] We have heard from parents who think that each approach is what they learned long ago.
I don’t think there is any “new math” vs “old math” on this topic. There is, instead, variation."
@clacke Truth. We could all just be using Newton’s notation of the calculus if Leibniz hadn’t made an integral with the 18th century Cool S. You wanna be precise? Use a programming language
@clacke Now I’m angry at Unicode Consortium that I can’t do that, and angry at my past self for not writing an integral with Cool S at least once