Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
Perl-Sensitive Sunglasses
 
PerlMonks  

Re: zero to the power zero

by rodion (Chaplain)
on Feb 18, 2007 at 13:34 UTC ( [id://600690]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to zero to the power zero

x * (5**1) = x * 5 x * (0**1) = x * 0 = 0 x * (5**0) = x x * (0**0) = x
A useful way to think about it is that the exponent is telling you how many times to multiply by something. If you multiply x by 5 once you get 5x. If you don't multiply it by 5 at all, you just have the x you started with. That's the same as multiplying it by 5 zero times, and the same as multiplying it by 1.

If you don't multiply x by 0 at all, you still have the x you started with. It gives the same as multiplying x by one, so that's why we can say the value of 0**0 is 1.

As bart indicates, 0**0 is a bit of a strange consruct, whith strange relatives, but for simpler operations like the arithmetic most of us normally do in perl, it's really helpful to have it's value be 1, not undefined.

Hope this helps.

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://600690]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others having a coffee break in the Monastery: (5)
As of 2024-03-28 12:45 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found