W06 Math Lesson: The Order of Operations and Introduction to Variables

Overview 

Task: Study and work through the following math lesson AND complete the Math Gathering Activity prior to Gathering.

D&C 88:119 says, “Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God.”

Over the last several weeks you have been learning how to use individual arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. This week you will learn the rules of how to put the arithmetical operations together. The rules we use when applying several operations at once are called the Order of Operations. These rules are like the grammar rules for math. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to communicate equations with other people. You will also learn about variables.

Real-Life Connection

Just like a language, math has grammar rules too. Consider the following sentence.
“Ben and Joe goes swimming.”
“Ben and Joe”’ are plural, but “goes” is singular. Does this mean only one of them is going swimming? There is some confusion due to using the wrong verb tense. Confusion also arises in math when we don’t follow the order of operations. In the case of Ben and Joe, we can probably figure out what is happening, but in math, we may get the wrong answer.

Math Instruction and Practice

This math lesson is broken into several mini-lessons, each containing a lot of material. Be sure to start early in the week in case you need extra time to study and practice. To save you time and quickly discover which concepts you need more help with, you may first take the math exercises quiz. If you choose a wrong answer on any quiz question, you will receive feedback linking to lessons you can study to improve your skills in that area. You may take these quizzes as many times as you like until the due date in order to improve your score.

All the mini-lessons to help you improve your skills in this week's Math concepts are linked below, located in the PathwayConnect Resource Center Links to an external site.. If you still need help after going through the available materials, there are suggestions at the bottom of each lesson page to get more help.

Week 6 Math Gathering Activity

Each week you will have a math gathering activity which you will discuss with your gathering. Here is the question for this week’s gathering. A question similar to this will be the last question on this week's math exercises.

You want to purchase a shirt that normally costs $60, and you found it on sale for 5% off the regular price. Suppose there is a 5% sales tax that will be added to the sale price. Answer the following questions:

  1. How much money will you have to spend to purchase the shirt?
  2. One of your friends told you that if a $60 item is on sale for 5% off and there is a 5% sales tax that you do not need to do any calculations—the final cost after tax will be $60. How would you respond to this friend?