On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 11:03 PM, Minimiscience <minimiscie...@gmail.com>wrote:
> On Oct 1, 2009, at 4:43 PM, Jan Ingvoldstad wrote: > >> On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Moritz Lenz <mor...@faui2k3.org> wrote: >> >>> What's the 0th root of a number, then? >>> It would be a number $y for which $y ** 0 == $x, which can only be >>> fulfilled for $x == 1. So in the general cases the answer to the >>> question root($x, 0) is nonsense, which is best mapped to NaN. >>> >> >> That doesn't make sense. The answer is 1, not NaN. >> >> Think about it for a while: mathematically speaking, we would expect the >> 0th >> root of a number to be 1. >> > > I think you're confusing "root" with "power." Any number raised to the > zeroth power is one (except, arguably, zero itself), but, given a number > $num, its zeroth root is a number $base such that $base ** 0 == $num, which, > as stated above, only makes sense when $num == 1. You're of course right, that was an amazing brainfart. I blame society. -- Jan
