Recent content by Swapster

Me too!

My understanding (I have a son with a peanut allergy) is that the theory is that the immune system basically doesn't have enough to do so it starts reacting where it normally wouldn't. Maybe everything else that goes in to the body is so "clean" that it makes the peanut seem "dirty" in...

Wow, you guys missed a very important element to the pizza-buying equations. It was alluded to in one post where someone said their wife always asks how many slices. If you are ordering for any females over the age of 18, we only eat 2 slices no matter how big or small the slices are. To...

When my son was 5, he was just learning to ride a 2-wheeler. One afternoon, he wanted me to go out with him to practice and I said I'd be right out... he started without me. So, he's out there a couple of minutes and gets on the bike but has the helmut on the driveway. I was watching him out...

The -5 apples won't be very good, but if they were to give you -5 apples -5 times you'd have enough for 2 large pies.

Thank you.I will now quit thinking about this. It is what it is and it is convention, possibly logical and possibly not. However, I still think computers are calculating wrong in respect to this convention since if you do not include parenthesis they are assuming negative first (the sign bit...

That's crazy talk... I can see it right there.

Exactly!I knew the logic was flawed, but I'm asserting the logic in the first part is the same as the 2nd. You're taking -1 out of (5*5) when you say the -5^2 is really -1 * 5^2. 5^2 is 5x5. 5^2 is really just shorthand for 5*5, is it not? So, why can you factor multiplication out of a...

This answer convinced me, too because I'm picturing a graph, with -5, then -25, then -125 - it should all go in the downward direction like 5, 25, 125. It isn't intuitive for it to go -5, 25, -125 on a graph. BUT A negative times a negative is a positive, so the graph should jump above and...

Good Answer :popcorn:

OK, I see what you are saying. I was looking at plain old -5^2. If I had a formula such as savings to the 2nd power where x is savings, I would calcluate it as savings^2. BUT, if I wanted to calculate the negative of savings to the 2nd power then I certainly would code it as -1 * (savings)^2...

Woah! Now I'm :confused: ! How do you know by looking at the original problem to assume that it is saying "take five, square it then multiply by -1"? If that is the case, how on earth do you write "take negative five and then square it"? If you tell me it's (-5)^2, what I am asserting is...

I understand GIGO.But (-5)^2 is interpreted the same as -5^2, at least from what I've tried in a vbscript and excel. I haven't tried in a compiled language tonight, but I'm assuming it would be the same. So to make this calculate correctly, you'd have to put in and if/then/else to force it to...

Solution would still be wrong.NumVal = 5 NumSign = -1 Num = 5 * -1 Num = -5 Solution = -5^2, interpreted by computer as 25.

Programs don't work that way.I'm just saying... that any business apps that include exponentiation that could possibly be given a negative number are going to calculate incorrectly, based on what I have learned here. To force them to calculate correctly would take a lot of programming changes...