On Sat, 09 May 2009 16:48:19 +0000, Jim Higgins
wrote:

The proper precedence of mathematical operations is "PEMDAS," meaning
Parenthesis, Exponentiation, Mult/Div, Add/Sub.

Yep. The MS precidence is:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/25189/EN-US/

: Range
space Intersection
, Union
- Negation
% Percentage
^ Exponentiation
* or / Multiplication or Division
+ or - Addition or Subtraction
& Text Operator
= = = Comparison Operators

Note that the negation (negative sign) operator comes before any
arithmetic operators. The problem comes from Excel inventing some
kind of distinction between negation (negative number) and
substraction. For arithmetic, there is none. For C programmers,
there is a difference (in the way the data is stored). More on the
subject:
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/69058.html

That minus in front of the A1 is a unary negation, which is a
multiplication by minus 1, so it should be performed AFTER the
exponentiation, i.e; -A1^2 = -(A1^2)

Excel performs it before the exponentiation, i.e.; -A1^2 = (-A1)^2

The Excel answer is incorrect.

Yep. However, MS is not about to create problems by fixing the
problem. It would be a bad thing to have existing spreadsheets,
suddently give different results when run on updated and fixed
versions of Excel. Compatibility with old bugs is one reason that
bugs tend to be perpetuated. Old bugs and sleeping dogs should be
left alone.

73 de Jim, KB3PU

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Jeff Liebermann
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