From: "Dasson, Raghav" <raghav.dasson@...>
Date: 2009-12-18T18:52:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Math errors

jzakiya wrote:

> (-3)**3 => -27
> 
> (-27)**(1/3.0)  give NaN instead of -3
> 
> All odd roots (1/3,1/5,1/7 etc) of negative numbers should give
> negative root values, as above, but ruby (in irb) gives NaN (not a
> number), even when I require 'complex' .
> 
> Is this considered an error in Ruby?


I guess, you are right. THIS IS A 'MATH ERROR' in Ruby.

The ** method is not able to handle negative numbers raised to Floating points (that are not Integers)