Suppose if I need to transform $f(x)$ to $f(2x+1)$, the straightforward way is to do a horizontal translation of $1$ unit to the left followed by a stretch along the x-axis with a stretch factor of $0.5$
However, for $f(2(x+0.5))$, why do we perform a stretch along the x-axis with a stretch factor of $0.5$ followed by the horizontal translation of $0.5$ units to the left and not the other way round? I'm trying to reconcile the order of transformations with order of operations.