hahaha i read that as 'the fact that i'm a minority doesn't mean this isn't a ridiculous topic!"

this topic is really stupid btw. i hate math you are all a bunch of nerds. math is useless. let's talk about racist cartoons and music instead.

User friendly maths that.

(-4)^2 is 16

-(4^2) is - 16

When you write -4^2 you would assume that you take the whole number including the negative sign and square it included to get 16. This is the way that it has been done in every maths lesson for all of time in my life. If -16 has been the desired output, the teacher or lecturer will always make extra effort to show it is that way by giving particular emphasis in brackets.

Yeah in a lot of math classes a lot of people seem to get taught to see -4^2 as (-4)^2 if no parenthesis is shown anywhere.  I still instinctively see it like that at first sometimes especially if it's hand written.

what? its not about lack of parentheses. like yeah that would make it clearer but if you paid attention you would see that even then the correct answer is still -16, not because of a -1 or anything (which is what most of the people answering correctly are thinking) but because of a hidden order of operations operation that almost no one was taught existed, despite the fact it makes the difference between right and wrong.

What?

Are you implying that (-4)^2 = -16? With that I have to disagree fully.

oh I meant basic in appearance, not basic in doing it. like I wasn't going HAH but no one thinks for more than a second about this and yet half of the people are getting it wrong.

if i FLIP BACK a couple pages it is just you yellin at whoever for not knowing order of operations shit and telling them to go back to middle school.

this led to the discovery that in britain you can choose to not do math! it was more being FLUMMOXED that someone would know the mnemonic for order of operations and not know what it was.

Are you implying that (-4)^2 = -16? With that I have to disagree fully.

I said nothing about this but as rami pointed out, you cannot just say -4^2= -1*4^2. whats actually going on is that negation is an operation below exponentation.

on irc we used a really good word for it all


factoring...

if its -4^2 you factor out the -1 so you go -1(4^2)

I remember this. I think it goes kinda like this!

(-4)^2 = 16

-4^2 = -16

ahhh this hurt my brain. i haven't read any of the other stuff.. but i think you would calculate the exponent first... but people generally just write (-4) as -4... hmmm ahh... what is the truth!?!? i'm going wiht -16....

wait how did this become 8 pages

because there's ONE VOTE DIFFERENCE between the options up there obviously theres some disparity of thought going on that needs to be discussed.

its not even a damn digits diffefrence its a fucking slash

a slash

fuck maths burn this topic and bury it 6 feet underground gotta keep it from contamination

i uh...i dont think you know what a slash is.

Wow, being out of school and just quickly answering hurts! Had I thought about it instead of a quick answer, I'm sure I would've gotten. Oh well, i know better for next time lol

i uh...i dont think you know what a slash is.

its a fucking slash don't argue with me on this one gyou gota trust my judgemen

-4^2

whoa this just made everything make 10x more sense awesome thanks dx

np gr maybe you can be a better programmer now xD


lambdas...ha

-4^2

how do you take negative xanax?