[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Does anyone know of an approximation to raising a negative base to a > fractional exponent? For example, (-3)^-4.11111 since this cannot be > computed without using imaginary numbers. Any help is appreciated.
As others have said, you can use Python's complex numbers (just write -3 as -3+0j). If for some reason you don't want to, you can do it all with reals using Euler's formula, (-3)^-4.11111 = (-1)^-4.11111 * 3^-4.11111 = e^(j*pi*-4.11111) * 3^-4.11111 = (cos(pi*-4.11111) + j*sin(pi*-4.11111)) * 3^-4.11111 in Python: >>> import math >>> real_part = (3**-4.11111) * math.cos(-4.11111 * math.pi) >>> imaj_part = (3**-4.11111) * math.sin(-4.11111 * math.pi) >>> (real_part,imaj_part) (0.01026806021211755, -0.0037372276904401318) Ken -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
