This rearrangement also works without error.

=(-3)^(1/3)^(-2)


On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:53:55 -0500, Myrna Larson
wrote:

It probably has to do with Excel's internal parsing routines. If you add
parentheses, (i.e. what you show below),

=((-3)^(-2))^(1/3)

it doesn't give an error. But (-3)^(-2/3) does.

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 18:34:57 -0700, Dailoc Nguyen wrote:



Thanks for quick reply.
We have some reply that are not quite getting along with each other.
Mathematically, you can take an odd root of a negative number. Also
those 2 statements are equivalent mathematically [(-3)^(-2/3) =
((-3)^(-2))^(1/3)] and should not yield an imaginary number.
This question seems to be very interesting.

Lmn.

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