Greg Ewing and Jonathan Goble wrote >> Also, Fraction(1) for the second case would be flat-out wrong.
> How? Raising something to the 2/3 power means squaring it and then taking > the cube root of it. -1 squared is 1, and the cube root of 1 is 1. Or am I > having a 2:30am brain fart? Let's see. What about computing the Fraction(2, 4) power by first squaring and then taking the fourth root. Let's start with (-16). Square to get +256. And then the fourth root is +4. I've just followed process Jonathan G suggested, without noticing that Fraction(2, 4) is equal to Fraction(1, 2). But Fraction(1, 2) is the square root. And -16 requires complex numbers for its square root. The problem, I think, may not be doing something sensible in any particular case. Rather, it could be doing something sensible and coherent in all cases. A bit like trying to fit a carpet that is cut to the wrong size for the room. -- Jonathan _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
