I am tutoring a student who uses the Casio fx-300MS. A problem required that he raise (-2) to the 4th power, and the calculator indicated the answer was -16. I know that the answer should be a positive 16, but how should the problem be entered to get the correct answer? We were entering the -2 followed by ^4
Office Equipment & Supplies - Casio - FX-300MS Calculator
Answers & Comments
Enclose any negative number between parentheses before squaring.
If you enter -4^2, where - is the negation, the result will be -16 because of the priority rules: exponentiation (power) has priority over negation.
If you enter (-4)^2 the result will be 16, because parentheses have priority over the squaring: the 4 is negated then the result is squared.
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