Dear all, I am struggling to understand this. What happens when you raise a negative value to a power and the result is a very large number?
B [1] 47.73092 > -51^B [1] -3.190824e+81 # seems fine # now this: > x <- seq(-51,-49,length=100) > x^B [1] NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN <snip> > is.numeric(x^B) [1] TRUE > is.real(x^B) [1] TRUE > is.infinite(x^B) [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE I am lost, I checked the R mailing help, but could not find anything directly. I loaded package Brobdingnag and tried: as.brob(x^B) [1] NAexp(NaN) NAexp(NaN) NAexp(NaN) NAexp(NaN) NAexp(NaN) > as.brob(x)^B [1] NAexp(187.67) NAexp(187.65) NAexp(187.63) NAexp(187.61) I guess I must be misunderstanding something fundamental. Any clues would be really appreciated. Willem ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
