>Alan,
>
>It takes precedence because it does. I'm not making this up. Whether or not anyone can find alternate authorities as proof doesn't matter to me. I'm not going to wade through all of the crap sources on the internet that proclaim that -2 squared is -4. They are flatly wrong.
>

I'm thinking the argument isn't if "-2 squared is -4"; from what I've seen, that isn't the case. It's definitely 4. It's that if it's written as this:

-2^2 = -4

instead of this:

(-2)^2 = 4

It changes the meaning of what you've written.

If you've got some credible sources instead of what's been posted, I'd personally like to see them. I've actually found the Dr. Math site as fairly credible, as well as Wikipedia. But if they're wrong, I want to understand why (and who is making the claims so I can evaluate them in context).

Math is hard, let's go shopping.