On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 00:59:10 -0700, Alan Beban wrote:
Pounding on the desk about it being "very standard that exponientation
takes precedence over negation" is much less persuasive than would be
citing the "standard" order of precedence rules applicable in
mathematics. I don't find what "a semi-decent high school student" would
do to be very compelling. Why can't the people who are so emotional
about the issue (which, incidentally, seems to have been resolved in C
the same way as it is in Excel, which is hard to blame Microsoft for)
cite some persuasive authority besides the fact that their grandmother
taught them to Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally, which my limited Google
search suggests is applicable to only the binary operators listed and
not to unary operators? Maybe we could all learn something if we were
directed to an authoritative source of the convention in ordinary
mathematics without regard to programming.

By the definition of unary minus, -x^2 is the number such that
x^2 + (-x^2) = 0.

What is the derivative of -x^2 with respect to x? What is the slope of
the tangent line at x = 1? Is it positive or negative?

What is the integral of -x^2 from x = 0 to 1? Is it positive or
negative?


--
Dave Seaman
Judge Yohn's mistakes revealed in Mumia Abu-Jamal ruling.
<http://www.commoncouragepress.com/index.cfm?action=book&bookid=228