4 ms·
> Exponentiation to zero annoyed me as a kid Your teacher didn't tell you (or told you, but you didn't recognize it as something valuable and forgot it) that e
by bmacho 2y ago
> Exponentiation to zero annoyed me as a kid
Your teacher didn't tell you (or told you, but you didn't recognize it as something valuable and forgot it) that exponentiation to zero is a new definition over exponentiation to positive integers. Exponentiation to positive integers is defined somehow, and that definition says nothing about exponentiation to zero. It is a new definition, not something that you deduce.
The same holds for 0^0 or 0/0 (with some amounts of confusion, lies, and hypocriticism).
- jon_richards 2y agoDeclaring it as a new definition was what annoyed me... Which I found incredibly silly once I leaned about negative exponentiation and could now deduce the pattern. Similarly, 0/0 became much more tractable to me once I learned L'Hôpital's rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'H%C3%B4pital's_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'H%C3%B4pital's_rule
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]