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To: Lonesome in Massachussets
"0^0 = 1 !!! Excel spits out #NUM!

That's another one of those indeterminate forms. What's the log of 0? What does base zero mean? Somewhere you get a 0*inf NaN. 0! is simply defined as 1.

281 posted on 12/08/2006 5:01:49 PM PST by spunkets
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To: spunkets
Limit x -->0 [a^x] = 1 and Limit x-->0 [x^0] = 1, so 0^0 = 1 simply makes exponentiation continuous, with respect to the exponent and the radix.
284 posted on 12/08/2006 5:20:53 PM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets (The hallmark of a crackpot conspiracy theory is that it expands to include countervailing evidence.)
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To: spunkets
matlab is perfectly happy making 0^0 = 1, Excel spits out a number error.

matlab seems to lean to believing the user is somewhat mathematically sophisticated, Excel towards believing the user is mathematically naive. Excel tries hard to keep you out of trouble.
312 posted on 12/09/2006 7:12:03 AM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets (The hallmark of a crackpot conspiracy theory is that it expands to include countervailing evidence.)
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