On 2010-02-11 06:31 AM, Shashwat Anand wrote:
Do you really believe that -0.1 ** 0.1 is a valid computational problem
? Can you raise a negative number to a fractional power ?
Output on my console (python 2.6)
>>> -.1 ** .1
-0.79432823472428149
>>> a,b = -.1,.1
>>> a**b
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: negative number cannot be raised to a fractional power
>>> -abs(a**b)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: negative number cannot be raised to a fractional power
There is a little issue here that '>>> -.1 ** .1' should give you error
message. That is it.
No, fractional powers of negative numbers are perfectly valid mathematically.
The result is a complex number. In Python 3 (what the OP is using), this has
been implemented, but not in Python 2.6.
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
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