The only confusion I can see is if you intended for the 4 to be an exponent of the 3 and didn’t know how to do that inline, or if you did actually intend for the 4 to be a separate numeral in the same term? And I’m confused because you haven’t used inline notation in a place that doesn’t support exponents of exponents without using inline notation (or a screenshot of it).
As written, which inline would be written as (2^3)4, then it’s 32. If you intended for the 4 to be an exponent, which would be written inline as 2^3^4, then it’s 2^81 (which is equal to whatever that is equal to - my calculator batteries are nearly dead).
we don’t have a standard
We do have a standard, and I told you what it was. The only confusion here is whether you didn’t know how to write that inline or not.
It’s ambiguous because it works both ways, not because we don’t have a standard.
Try reading the whole sentence. There is a standard, I’m not claiming there isn’t. Confusion exists because operating against the standard doesn’t immediately break everything like ignoring brackets would.
Just to make sure we’re on the same page (because different clients render text differently, more ambiguous standards…), what does this text say?
234
It should say 2^3^4; “Two to the power of three to the power of four”. The proper answer is 2⁸¹, but many math interpreters (including Excel, MATLAB, and many students) will instead compute 8⁴, which is quite different.
We have a standard because it’s ambiguous. If there was only one way to do it, we’d just do that, no standard needed. You’d need to go pretty deep into kettle math or group theory to find atypical addition for example.
Exponents are second, parentheses/brackets are always first. What order you do your exponents in is another ambiguity though.
No it isn’t - top down.
234 is ambiguous. 2(34) is standard practice, but some calculators aren’t that smart and will do (23)4.
It’s ambiguous because it works both ways, not because we don’t have a standard. Confusion is possible.
The only confusion I can see is if you intended for the 4 to be an exponent of the 3 and didn’t know how to do that inline, or if you did actually intend for the 4 to be a separate numeral in the same term? And I’m confused because you haven’t used inline notation in a place that doesn’t support exponents of exponents without using inline notation (or a screenshot of it).
As written, which inline would be written as (2^3)4, then it’s 32. If you intended for the 4 to be an exponent, which would be written inline as 2^3^4, then it’s 2^81 (which is equal to whatever that is equal to - my calculator batteries are nearly dead).
We do have a standard, and I told you what it was. The only confusion here is whether you didn’t know how to write that inline or not.
Try reading the whole sentence. There is a standard, I’m not claiming there isn’t. Confusion exists because operating against the standard doesn’t immediately break everything like ignoring brackets would.
Just to make sure we’re on the same page (because different clients render text differently, more ambiguous standards…), what does this text say?
It should say
2^3^4; “Two to the power of three to the power of four”. The proper answer is 2⁸¹, but many math interpreters (including Excel, MATLAB, and many students) will instead compute 8⁴, which is quite different.We have a standard because it’s ambiguous. If there was only one way to do it, we’d just do that, no standard needed. You’d need to go pretty deep into kettle math or group theory to find atypical addition for example.