[R] WIERD: Basic computing in R

[Thomas Lumley]

This is FAQ 7.33

 	-thomas

On Tue, 1 Jul 2008, poolloopus at yahoo.com wrote:

> Can someone please enlighten me as to why the following happens?
>> -2.7^8.6
> [1] -5125.407
>
>> p<- -2.7
>> q<- 8.6
>> p^q
> [1] NaN
> R seems perfectly able to calculate -2.7^8.6, but fails when the exact same values are assigned to variables and then the computation is repeated.
> Thanks in advance for any suggetsions.
> Kris.
>
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle