Serious bug in order of evaluation?

[Cagdas Ozgenc]

Greetings,

I am using Excel 2007 and I don't know if this is a feature or a bug.
I wrote the following expression:

=-(A1^2+A2^2+A3^2 -1)^2

The result is always positive. It seems like Excel is also squaring
the negative sign. In mathematical expressions

-X^2 means -(X^2) not (-X)^2. Otherwise all polynomial expressions are
messed up.

Thanks in advance.

 

[GS]

Try...

=-ABS(-(A1^2+A2^2+A3^2 -1)^2)