Amerchant is planning a shipment of the nation's top export product. he buys 17 new shipping crates. a week later, he uses one half of all his crates for a shipment. now he has 32 crates left. how many crates did he begin with?

I think your looking for PEMDAS. Typical you would find the value of the ,ath expression using PEMDAS. PEMDAS stands for Parentheses Exponents Multiplication Division Addition Subtraction. When using PEMDAS (order of operation) you have to use each letter in order, So look for parentheses and if their aren't any look for the exponents which would look like  then you would do all multiplication and division then addition and subtractions