Stephen J. Herschkorn wrote:

as a follow up to Alan Beban's previous post, snippet:

SH
Plot the curve y = -x^2.
AB
I can't until someone gives me the convention to
determine whether it is to be interpreted as
y=-(x)^2 or y=(-x)^2


I suspect you are being highly disingenous here. Either
that, or you must have had a terrible time getting
through high-school level algebra. The onus is on *you*
to provide one reputable source, outside of computer
manuals, where these expressions are not interpreted as I
have been maintaining.


If you'll forgive me, and in the nicest way, you give the
impression of an academic stuck in narrow confinement. You
previously cited convention or notation that is in the
ever on going process of evolution. For readability,
brevity and generally understood it has until recently
served its purpose well. But a convention nonetheless, and
potentially ambiguous.

Alan's point is pertinent and helpful, you (and Dave
Seaman nearby) have missed it. The onus is not on him
to "to provide one reputable source", you may well be
correct that such does not exist. Surely, the point is
that the onus is on the user of a chosen app to explicitly
conform to "its" convention. If you don't like it
don't "chose" to use it. I would be very surprised if
there are any of today's maths students unaware of such
requirement, particularly with something as ubiquitous as
Excel.

My school days were long before the aid of a chip.
Fortunately I was taught to think like this:

+(+1) -(+1) +(-1)

1-1-1 is an abbreviation, partial evaluation or
conventional notation of the above, depending on your
point of view.

BTW, to conform with "another" Excel convention you need
to append the shorter version with an "=" before entering
into a cell. Optionally you may elect to switch to a
Lotus convention. It's one of those need to know things.

Regards,
Peter

PS, in another post Fred wrote along the lines that
negation and subtraction are the same. Maybe you can
correct me but I was taught negation may be considered as

A x (-1)
or, a double subtraction of itself as in
A - A - A