Multiplying by a number raised to the zero-th power is a NOP. This comes up frequently in the context of polynomials, where the constant term is often expresse

Multiplying by a number raised to the zero-th power is a NOP. This comes up frequently in the context of polynomials, where the constant term is often expressed as the x^0 term. E.g in f(x) = 3x^2 + 2x^1 + 1x^0 , we would like to have f(0)=0. In many cases this is important because we express polynomials as a sum: f(x) = sum (n from 0 to 2) { (n+1)x^n }, so having x^0 behave reasonably at x=0 allows us to avoid needed to special case the n=0 term.