>Metin,
>
>> but online math calculator, my math. eng. friend and my daughter say -4... :(
>
>They are all wrong. The answer is 4.
>
>The unary negation operation has higher precedence than exponentiation.
>
>I order for the answer to be -4, the expression would have to be -(2**2) using parens in order to force the exponentiation to happen first.

No David. In normal math, the unary operator does not have precedence because it actually represents a multiplication by -1. In other words, -2**2 is the same as saying -1*2**2 and since exponentiation takes precedence over multiplication, the correct answer is -4. For the record, I thought it was 4 at first too.

Check this out: http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/69058.html