"fred" wrote in message ...
Do any of you SCI.MATH whizes want to weigh in on this?

MS Excel calculates "=-5^2" as 25, not as -25.
This is because 'negation' is handled first in Excel. (!?)
If you put a zero in the equation,
as in "=0-5^2", your answer changes to -25.

Is this in line with standard math rules?
Is negation different than subtraction?

I'm getting a lot of comments in the Excel NG
basically saying that "it's in the help section, so too bad".

I've had lots of math and as far as I know
negation and subtraction are the same thing.



Negation and subtraction are not the same thing. Subtraction has TWO
operands. As I learned in second-grade math, minuend minus subtrahend
equals difference.
Perhaps that's not in the grade-school math books anymore.

David Ames