Order of Operations Worksheet

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Print & Watch Before Starting the Order of Operations Worksheet

Print the Order of Operations Worksheet (PS1) above. Then, watch the video below for some motivation about why the order of operations, the order that you do the math, matters. The “order of ops,” as we say, does matter, and you want to do things in the right order.

We will cover the operations in problems 1.1 to 1.5, and in problems 1.6 and 1.7 we look at how the order of operations works.

In case you’re wondering about that acronym, PEMDAS stands for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, and Addition and Subtraction. That’s the correct order to do the math for a multi-step math problem, and we’ll learn about about it when we get into PS1 in the next video.

There’s even a newspaper article in the New York Times about PEMDAS problems. The article cites the sentence, “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sallie,” which is yet another way to remember how to do the math correctly.

Advance to the Next Video

Click next lesson below or use the syllabus navigation menu to advance to the video explaining PS1.1, the first problem in the order of operations worksheet/PEMDAS worksheet.

Some Vocabulary Used in the Order of Operations Worksheet

In case you are wondering, here are the operations we are talking about:

• Addition: it can be done in any order. Formally, these are called the associative and commutative properties for addition.
• Subtraction: really just addition
• Multiplication: for positive and negative numbers
• Division: really just multiplication
• Negation: a change of sign (plus to minus or minus to plus). Also really just multiplication.
• Identity: an “operation” that changes nothing. A useful math concept. Could be for addition (add zero) or multiplication (multiply by 1)
• Parentheses: indicate above operations that should be done before others, in math
• Order of Operations: The above must be done in the correct order to get the correct answer. You can’t just do the math correctly but in random order. The correct sequence to perform the operations is: parentheses, followed by multiplication, followed by addition.
• We sometimes say Order of Ops for short, or these days PEMDAS. PEMDAS is an acronym that stands for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. You can learn about the correct order of operations in the above PEMDAS worksheet and videos, although we won’t get to exponents until Problem Set 2.