On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 11:24 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> 5 * 0 * 0 * 0 * 0 = 0 > > Where did the 5 come from? > > You're effectively saying that 0**0 becomes 5*0**0, then cancelling the 0**0 > because they're all zeroes and so don't matter, leaving 5. And that simply > doesn't work. If it did work, there's nothing special about 5, we could use > 18 instead: > > 0**0 = 5*0**0 => 5 > > but 0**0 = 18*0**0 => 18 > therefore 5 = 18. > > Yay maths! :-)
To clarify, I'm following this sequence: 5 * 0**4 = 5 * 0 * 0 * 0 * 0 = 0 5 * 0**3 = 5 * 0 * 0 * 0 = 0 5 * 0**2 = 5 * 0 * 0 = 0 5 * 0**1 = 5 * 0 = 0 5 * 0**0 = 5 = ? Multiplication by zero is idempotent; any number of multiplications beyond the first won't change the result. But that doesn't mean that never multiplying by zero will have the same result. I think it's fairly obvious in this example that the pattern does NOT continue to the case where you're multiplying in no zeroes. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
