I think I was taught this at pretty much every level of my education..
So I've known this since the first time multiplication and division came up in first or second grade. And it was STILL mentioned when we took our first courses in programming, because things like this exist: www.cs.uwf.edu/~eelsheik/cop2253/resources/op_precedence.html
I remember being shown some ridiculous, long strings of +, -, = signs and bracets with two or three variables within, each appearing a few times; and then being assigned the task of puzzling out the end values of all those variables. Mostly it was to give us an example of how NOT to program and encourage us to strive towards producing readable code, of course. It certainly is possible to handle precedence correctly with just a generous use of brackets, even if you ignore all the other rules, and often that can be the easiest to read also.
Anyway, my mind is blown that not all people know about this.. Either teaching has gone up a long way in ~20 years, or I have just been lucky with my maths education :)
(, Mon 6 Jun 2011, 21:37, Reply)