A common techinique for remembering the order of operations is the abbrieviation "PEMDAS", which is turned into the phrase " Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally". It stands for " Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, and Addition and Subtraction". This tells you the ranks of the operations: Parentheses outrank exponents, which outrank multiplication and division (but multiplication and divison are at the same rank), and these two outrank addition and subtraction (which are together on the bottom rank). When you have a bunch of operations of the same rank, you just operate from left to right.