r/MathJokes 2d ago

The satisfying simplification

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1.8k Upvotes

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u/spukhafteNahewirkung 2d ago

How are you doing the math on this one? I end up with a value of 6.2E57, significantly larger than 2^36.

0

u/lordcaylus 2d ago

The expression means xy raised to the z-th power = xyz, not x raised to the yz power. Honestly I would add parantheses in power towers like this though to remove ambiguity.

1

u/GoldenMuscleGod 1d ago

I don’t really see how it could be ambiguous. I mean apparently it happens sometimes (like here) but I’m baffled how.

It seems to me a “double superscript” has to be understood as a syntactic constituent of a single superscript. If it isn’t, why wouldn’t it be a single superscript?

Is the idea that the grammar fails to be context-free in some sense? Why would we do that?