...1^2 I had thought it is +1. My Bigloo Scheme gives: (expt -1 2) --> 1 However, the R language tailored to statistical calculations gives the following: print(-1^2) --> -1 Some have argued on heise.... problem I guess. Surely the answer depends on the rules of a language? Programming languages != mathematical notation. As an example, in C you will get -3. And in ...

... -1^2 I had thought it is +1. My Bigloo Scheme gives: (expt -1 2) --> 1 However, the R language tailored to statistical calculations gives the following: print(-1^2) --> -1 Some have argued on heise.de ...not so easy problem I guess. Surely the answer depends on the rules of a language? Programming languages != mathematical notation. As an example, in C you will get -3.

...1^2 I had thought it is +1. My Bigloo Scheme gives: (expt -1 2) --> 1 However, the R language tailored to statistical calculations gives the following: print(-1^2) --> -1 Some have argued on heise.de... how to interpret the string "-1^2", which is the problem of the "other" language to solve or conventionalize. -- Duane Rettig duane@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com...

... I had thought it is +1. My Bigloo Scheme gives: (expt -1 2) --> 1 However, the R language tailored to statistical calculations gives the following: print(-1^2) --> -1 Some have ...notation: -1^2 Is it -(1^2) or (-1)^2? All languages I use interpret it as -(1^2) which is what a .... (Think -x^2.) But I can imagine that there exist languages which treat the minus sign as part of the number, and ...

... about the following: What is the correct answer of the following: -1^2 I had thought it is +1. My Bigloo Scheme gives: (expt -1 2) --> 1 However, the R language tailored to statistical calculations gives the following: print(-1^2) --> -1 Some have argued on heise.de that -1 is mathematically speaking the right answer. Thanks, for any...

...result, the other is that this data value should be ignored. Note that the S and R languages used in statistics have both NA and NaN. NA for data that should be ignored, usually... such as someone not answering a survey question. As an interpreted language it is fairly easy to do, though I believe they use... bits. It might be an interesting feature to add to other languages and/or hardware. -- glen

... me, just go compute a useful value from other arguments." (And I still have trouble with that viewpoint.) The R language, mostly used for statistics work, has both NA and NaN. NA when you don't know anything about the value...as the result of computations. I believe the distiction could also make sense in other languages, though I don't expect it to appear anytime soon. -- glen