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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T07:22:59+00:00

I am experience a problem calculating the result when putting a vector to the

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I am experience a problem calculating the result when putting a vector to the power of a decimal. The problem is more specifically that negative numbers in the vector come back as NAN. This also happens if I assign the negative number to a variable. Some examples to explain:

> -5.718301^2.85
[1] -143.9498

> test<--5.718301
> test
[1] -5.718301
> test^2.85
[1] NaN

> c(5.718301)^2.85
[1] 143.9498
> c(-5.718301)^2.85
[1] NaN

Can anyone explain to me why this happens? And any way around it? The vector in question may have positive and negative values, therefore, I can’t assign a negative sign after.

Thanks in advance,
Aran

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There is no real valued solution to (-5.718301)^2.85 and so NaN is the correct answer. 

    > (-5.718301)^2.85
[1] NaN

    What you are attempting here is akin to asking for the square root of a negative number.

    When you successfully evaluated 

    -5.718301^2.85

    the precedence of the operators meant that this was equivalent to 

    -(5.718301^2.85)

    and of course that is well-defined.

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