negative number raised to even power

[Dave Britten]

(05-08-2015 05:15 AM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  

(05-08-2015 02:27 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  I find it much more elegant to consider the negation prefix as an inseparable part of the number [...]

It isn't, since you cannot consistently do what generations of studens did before: Rewriting an equation

-2^2 = -4

to

0 = -4 + 2^2

I bet most people would just do it this way without giving it a second thought.

Yeah, that does make for an ugly little pitfall. Maybe we need to just start writing it like fractions/division: base under the caret, power directly over it. Then you'd have to either put the negation sign unambiguously next to either operand, or the caret itself.