What does 0^0 equal? Why do mathematicians and high school teachers disagree?

Re:What does 0^0 equal? Why do mathematicians and high schoo... by amalcon on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @09:24PM (#2923386)

This explanation works pretty well on adults: Just include the multiplicative identity (1) in the expansion.

  3^3 = 3*3*3*1 = 27
  3^2 = 3*3*1   = 9
  3^1 = 3*1     = 3
  3^0 = 1       = 1

and likewise:

  0^3 = 0*0*0*1 = 0
  0^2 = 0*0*1   = 0
  0^1 = 0*1     = 0
  0^0 = 1       = 1

I haven't yet tried this on an actual 10 year old, though.

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Re:What does 0^0 equal? Why do mathematicians and high schoo... by jkent on Thursday August 25, 2011 @06:43PM (#2926698)

Also good, but the last line doesn't work (in my opinion): to get from 0x1 to 1 you need to undo the x0, i.e. dividing by 0. Which is undefined ... Zero, confusing 10 year olds for centuries!

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Re:What does 0^0 equal? Why do mathematicians and high schoo... by amalcon on Friday August 26, 2011 @02:29PM (#2929401)

True. If you approach it from a standpoint of extrapolation from known values, you have a division by zero one way or the other.

What I'd intended was that the value of 1 was reached by applying the same algorithm that was applied to arrive at the other values: start with 1, multiply by the base once per instance of the exponent. No division involved.

It's still incorrect if we want to be strict, of course. That algorithm is not quite the definition of exponentiation, because that algorithm can't really be extended to work outside rational exponents. Exponentiation is defined across complex numbers (ignoring 0^0 for the moment). I think this is acceptable because I'm only shooting for an explanation, which doesn't need to be strict.

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