Expert: Lynn Houston - 9/7/2010

Question
Hi!

What is the sign of a negative number raised to an odd
power? Why?

Thanks!!

Answer
It's going to be negative.  The easiest way to see this is to just pick a number and cube it.

Start with -2... times -2 makes it positive... times -2 again makes it negative.  If you keep going, every other one will be negative or in other words, every odd multiplication will be negative since a negative times a negative is positive, but a positive times a negative is  negative.