Dik T. Winter wrote:

In article "fred" writes:
Do any of you SCI.MATH whizes want to weigh in on this?

Well, contrary to some responders I do not read this in an excel newsgroup
(I have no reason to read such a newsgroup...).

MS Excel calculates "=-5^2" as 25, not as -25.

Yes, that is one of the possibilities.

Can you cite one publication, not a computer langauge manual, where the
author computed -5^2 as 25? We are talking about the convention of the
end user here. If you were helping a child with the school problem to
plot y = -x^2, what you show him/her?

The fact that there are some expressions (e.g., a^b^c) where
precedence is not as standard does not negate that the standard of -x^2
is virtually universal.

--
Stephen J. Herschkorn