As one can see, zero to the zero power (0^0) in SMath will give you an error - Uncertainty.
I am just wondering why it is not accepted to be one (1) ?. I think it might be more useful to be 1 than to rise an error.

Any comments?

Regards,
Radovan

It is an interesting question Radovan.

Seems there isn't a uniform convention: Wolframalpha returns undefined, while Phyton, SciLab and Octave they returns 1. Also in spreadsheets most of the programs returns 1, some the #NUM error. No one of the programs in my knowledge returns 0.

In one hand the error leave the users more control over this problem (you can trap it using the try function or can be avoided if you know in advance that such issue might happens, using if/else statement on the base/exponent arguments calculated separately), in the other hand 1 might be more "productive" (but I guess in some case might represent a source of errors if you don't know what you are doing with your math; however this convention is accepted in many programs, so doesn't seems a big stop).

0^0=1 is conventionalised in Mathcad, not in Smath.
Numerically, 0 is a variable. In the expansion, it first calculates ln(0)
which is undefined [uncertain]. Consequently, exp(0*ln(0))is undefined
or uncertain. On the other hand, 0^1=0 is a damned big bug in Smath.

Jean

Hi.

There are 7 indeterminate form. All can be reduced to the forms 0/0 or inf/inf, as is showing in this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminate_form#List_of_indeterminate_forms . As SMath have now try ... catch function, I guess that the best is take as error all of them.

Best regards.

Alvaro.

L'Hospital is for bed time reading outside the classroom .
In CAS, we need CAS values, i.e: numerical values.
It's up to each system to be educated or voluntarily ignorant.

Jean

In those "uncertainties", Smath report its own uncertainties.
That's not what you want in Classroom or Engineering.
Rather, you want this, that Smath should have by recognition: