You should use parentheses whenever you are in doubt. The addition involves two rational numbers, so rational number addition is done. Besides the five arithmetic operators, Mathematica provides many built-in functions that operate on numbers. This takes the square root of a rational number and then converts it into floating-point form. Some functions take more than one parameter.
Exercises Compute the following values.
If you happen to know the name of a function and wish to know more about it, you can ask Mathematica to display help information for it. Sqrt You can get more detailed information by using the help browser. Mathematica will help you explore even if you have no idea what you're looking for. When you select one of the topics displayed in the help browser, Mathematica will display a variety of subtopics.