Just tried this on my ipod touch and it returned 16! lols!

this was like a week of elementary school math class, just doing -4^2 vs. -(4)^2 vs. (-4)^2 vs. -(4^2) and it was really boring but i've never forgotten

Because -4^2 is not (-4)^2. It's not. If you want it to be (-4)^2, you say (-4)^2.

I don't want to argue with half of the forum really, but by this logic if you want it to be -1(4^2), you say -1(4^2).

saying that -4^2 = (-4)^2 is just lazy and careless math.

Yeah but as I said before writing -4^2=-1(4^2) is lazy as well. Why can't they write it down fully?

My point is that it's not obvious to like half(or most) people that the "-" sign in -4^2 is not part of the "4". If you just look at this writing most people would assume it's a -4 with exponential, because it looks like it. In this example :"3+4+9-4^2" it's pretty clear that the 4^2 is a different operation and have the higher priority over the others, but if it's on it's own like in the question people easily assume it's -4*-4.

Not to mention the fact that most calculators and teachers say the same. No wonder people are confused about this.


I think the problem could be easily solved by putting the parentheses there in both examples. I know -4^2 is shorter than -1(4^2) but it would save many people from headaches.
 

i trollvoted

fuckin' n00bs learn to google

fuck math, im gonna piss out my second story window

who is gonna read all 10 pages of this?

not me

hey dietcoke


find the area under the curve x^2 on the interval 0 to 3

hey!

I CAN DO THAT!

sweet.

oh man steel if you can, anyone can

is it 9.

i hope its 9.

i havent integrated anything in years.

yeah its 9.......

i remember some f(x)dx stuff and a +c how come none of that came into play or did it and you're being sarcastic.

lets go over some calc in this thread.

nah, when its a definite integral you dont need +c, +c comes in when its just like,

integrate 2x, so the integral would be x^2 + c

like you could think of it as the c's cancel out when you are doing a definite one


(3^3/3 +c) - (0^3/3 +c)

so it'd just be 9 +c - c u c??? D:

oh yeah, gotcha.

i knew it wasnt in that but i couldn't remember why!