negative number raised to even power

[cyrille de brébisson]

Hello,

Unfortunately, this is another area where Math is un, or badly defined.

There is a clearly defined order of priority for power, mul/div, add/sub and (), but after that, there is no 'universally' agreed upon order of priority, thus leading to that type of issues.

Honestly, coming from a RPN world, for me the sign is 'part' of the number, not an prefix operator, and I would have parsed it as such had I been the one making the decision, but it seems that it is more 'customary' to do it the other way around (although not an absolute rule).

One thing is sure, when doing anything more that purely basic math, it is a good idea to verify with the people around you if indeed you have the same definition of basic math concepts in order to avoid fights! Degenerate triangles are another example of such poorly defined math concept.

Cyrille