Geez doesn't anyone know PEMDAS?

[harshness]

Multiplication and division have EQUAL IMPORTANCE in PEMDAS. It goes Parentheses, then Exponents, then Multiplication and Division from left to right, then Addition and Subtraction from left to right.

I said it was handy to give multiplication higher precedence when presented with the fifth grade "conundrum" of algebraic shorthand, not that PEMDAS demanded it.

Maybe the ambiguity comes from another shortcut and it is better to use the numerator over denominator representation like this:

2x          2x
-- - 1  OR  --y - 1 
3y           3

As I pointed out earlier, algebra (when did they start discussing variables in fifth grade?) tends to associate a factor with a variable which involves substitution.

Fortunately, we're rarely exposed to such stupidity in the real world (and surely shouldn't be exposed to it as part of a lesson on PEMDAS)