negative number raised to even power

[DrD]

It's been a long time since I was in a math class for this topic, but, like rprosperi, I recall exactly the scheme he posted. Later on, in a computer science class, this theme was again discussed, with emphasis on the order of operations, and used in exam problems.

It generated a lot of debate then, and I thought it might be fun to try to gain current wisdom from members of this group, given all the latest tools, resources and intellectual power that resides here.

This subject emphasizes how machine results may differ, even though the external human-interface problem solving steps are the same.