I have a question for any mathfags on here that care to answer. Is PEMDAS essentially an arbitrary development ? Could algebra have proceeded, say, as DASPEM or MEPSAD or any other way you want to imagine it being reordered? Now, I'm not so dumb as to suggest you can do math correctly even if you don't follow PEMDAS. But is it possible mathematics could have developed along different lines? Hopefully I don't sound like idiot. Just curious if anyone has better insight into this than myself.