Re: Re: power operator (again)

On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Kris Craig <kris.craig@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 4:33 AM, Daniel Lowrey <rdlowrey@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Thanks for all your effort! Unfortunately, since there's no option for > > > negative numbers to intuitively square to positive outcomes, my vote is > > > still No. I understand and respect your reasoning even though I do not > > > agree with it. > > > > To me this is not a question of "intuitive" vs. "unintuitive" ... -3^2 > > = > -9 > > is how the preponderance of credible resources evaluate the expression. > As > > far as I can tell voting "no" on this basis is equivalent to me claiming > > the earth is flat because it better fits my world-view. > > > That's a faulty analogy. In mathematics, the square of any number, > positive or negative, yields a positive result. Any scientific or graphing > calculator will match that behavior. I did sqr(-3) in the Windows > Calculator just now and it outputted 9, not -9. > The problem here is that pow(-3, 2) is equivalent to the expression `(-3) ** 2, not -(3 **2). Said differently, -3 ** 2` is equivalent to -pow(3,2) and not pow(-3,2). Hopefully this helps.