then we want to do exponents then multiplication and division and this doesn't mean multipication comes before division if you have a bunch of multipication and division going on you want to go left to right this just tells us multipication or division will go before addition and subtraction and once again this doesn't mean that addition goes before subtraction it means they're the same level that multipication or division goes before these guys if you have some combination of addition and subtraction you just go left to right so with that out of the way let's evaluate the expression so let's see inside of our parentheses so we don't have well we have a 2 inside of our parentheses that's going to evaluate to a 2 and the negative 3 is going to evaluate to negative 3 and negative 1 is going to evaluate to negative 1 so the parentheses can't be simplified a lot 