Reading the comments here amaze me how convoluted people are in their thinking.
Very simply… mathematical formulas have to follow “grammar” rules that the person writing and the person reading both agree on or understand.
So 8/2(2+2) depending on which system of “grammar” you are using will get you one of two results.
1. Following the system where multiplication is deemed a higher order operation than division:
(8)/(2(2+2)) = 1
2. Following the system where multiplication and division are deemed equal in order of operations you just compute left to right with this result:
(8/2)(2+2) = 16
Neither answer is more correct or better, they just reflect a different set of rules for parsing the equation.