• Narrrz@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    actually, I thought of a (maybe) helpful way to visualise this.

    x^-n is equivalent to 1÷(x^n), so 10^-1 is one tenth, 10^-2 is one hundredth, so on. the number, x, appears in the equation n times.

    you can view positive exponents as the inverse, (x^n)÷1. likewise, the number appears n times.

    so what happens for x^0? well, zero is neither positive nor negative. and to maintain consistency, x must appear in the equation zero times. so what you’re left with is 1÷1, regardless of what number you input as x.

    • uristOP
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      1 year ago

      I’m not sure this reasoning holds. We’re talking about 0, and 0^z with z<0 is division by zero.

      I do think it makes sense for it to be 1 in some contexts.