[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [Help-glpk] Zero to the power of zero
From: |
Andrew Makhorin |
Subject: |
Re: [Help-glpk] Zero to the power of zero |
Date: |
Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:45:52 +0300 |
> Is there a particular reason that 0**0 is undefined in GMPL? Of course it
> is a reasonable choice to have it like that, but it seems that an as
> reasonable choice is to let it evaluate to 1.
> (Maybe this has been up for discussion before, but I just came across it
> as a problem now...)
0^0 = 1 is just a technical convention like sqrt(-2) = 0, which may be
convenient in some cases. However, in the strong mathematical sense due
to discontinuity this convention is incorrect, because it may lead to
wrong conclusions; for example, from the identity x^(m-n) = (x^m)/(x^n)
it would follow that 0^0 = 0^(m-m) = 0^m/0^m = 0/0 = 1.