That's okay. I can always discuss it with my father the Math phd who was a mathematics professor for 40 years if you want to go that route.
Go ahead, ask him. Order of operations is not a universal truth (as in the cartoon you posted), it's a convention:
In mathematics and computer programming, the order of operations (or operator precedence) is a collection of rules that reflect conventions about which procedures to perform first in order to evaluate a given mathematical expression.
excel calculates it to 16
Excel will force you to change =8/2(2+2) to =8/2*(2+2), and then give you 16. That's because Excel doesn't do implied multiplication, thus leaving left to right as the decisive factor.