Mnemonic Device:
- Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
- Peanuts Ended My Doughnut Addiction Saturday
- People Everywhere Must Devour Additional Seafood
- Paul’s Energetic Monkey Danced And Sang
- Please Eat McDonald’s After School
- Purple Elephants May Destroy Abbott School
Explanation: Used to remember the order of arithmetic operations (Parentheses, Exponent, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract).
We are not allowed to used any type of PEMDAS mnemonic because or department chair doesn’t like the fact that the “P”isn’t accurate–it includes more than parentheses). So, I came up with the acronym GERMDAS, “G”being grouping symbols, which includes parentheses, brackets, braces, absolute value, radicals, and fraction bars. Sometimes, when it seems needed, I have a contest for the students to come up with the best sentence for remembering the acronym; however, since it starts with germ, it’s been fairly easy. :-)