Re: Order of operations (was: Eigenvalues &/or eigenvectors,
Re: Order of operations (was: Eigenvalues &/or eigenvectors,
- Subject: Re: Order of operations (was: Eigenvalues &/or eigenvectors,
- From: Jean-Baptiste LE STANG <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 23:20:12 -0700
Why on eart is there 2 minus sign on a calculator ?
- one is a binary operator for : a-b
- one is a unary operator for : -a
JB
Le mardi, 13 mai 2003, ` 13:06 US/Pacific, Reinhold Penner a icrit :
On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 09:23 Pacific/Honolulu, Gary Lists wrote:
If I write -x^2, I expect the result to be a *negative* number.
Absolutely. Anyone with a decent math education would expect that.
WHY would you ever _expect_ that?
Because that's the rule. You may not like it or understand it, but
exponentiation precedes negation
Having taught high school math and algebra, I can tell you that you
no one
should expect a square to be negative.
You better apologize to your students... ;-)
-Reinhold
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