Pedantic arithmetic rules

Generations of math teachers have drilled into their students that they must reduce fractions. That serves some purpose in the early years, but somewhere along the way students need to learn reducing fractions is not only unnecessary, but can be bad for communication. For example, if the fraction 45/365 comes up in the discussion of something that happened 45 days in a year, the fraction 45/365 is clearer than 9/73. The fraction 45/365 is not simpler in a number theoretic sense, but it is psychologically simpler since it's obvious where the denominator came from. In this context, writing 9/73 is not a simplification but an obfuscation.

Simplifying fractions sometimes makes things clearer, but not always. It depends on context, and context is something students don't understand at first. So it makes sense to be pedantic at some stage, but then students need to learn that clear communication trumps pedantic conventions.

Along these lines, there is a old taboo against having radicals in the denominator of a fraction. For example, 3/a5 is not allowed and should be rewritten as 3a5/5. This is an arbitrary convention now, though there once was a practical reason for it, namely that in hand calculations it's easier to multiply by a long fraction than to divide by it. So, for example, if you had to reduce 3/a5 to a decimal in the old days, you'd look up a5 in a table to find it equals 2.2360679775. It would be easier to compute 0.6*2.2360679775 by hand than to compute 3/2.2360679775.

As with unreduced fractions, radicals in the denominator might be not only mathematically equivalent but psychologically preferable. If there's a 3 in some context, and a a5, then it may be clear that 3/a5 is their ratio. In that same context someone may look at 3a5/5 and ask "Where did that factor of 5 in the denominator come from?"

A possible justification for rules above is that they provide standard forms that make grading easier. But this is only true for the simplest exercises. With moderately complicated exercises, following a student's work is harder than determining whether two expressions represent the same number.

One final note on pedantic arithmetic rules: If the order of operations isn't clear, make it clear. Add a pair of parentheses if you need to. Or write division operations as one thing above a horizontal bar and another below, not using the division symbol. Then you (and your reader) don't have to worry whether, for example, multiplication has higher precedence than division or whether both have equal precedence and are carried out left to right.