Elementary Math: Learning the Order of Operations - Math and Reading Help To make it easier to understand the importance of the order of operations, try working out a problem in the wrong order. Here's an example: 8 - ( 7 + 3 ) = -2. If you ignore the parentheses and just go in order from left to right, you get 4 as your answer. But if you start inside the parentheses (adding 7 and 3 to get 10), you get the correct ...