DLyons May 26, 2014:

@Geneviève So what did the client say?

Thomas Rebotier May 23, 2014:

Je suis de l'avis de Tony, mais c'est certain que pour cet élément important il faut demander au client

HERBET Abel May 23, 2014:

It is a new algebra, I give up, too hard

Tony M May 23, 2014:

You don't! I think that's the whole problem — writer has used 'square' with presumably the intended meaning of 'raised to the power of...'

The problem possibly arises because we are familiar with the expression 'square root of...' (no-one would every say '2nd root of'!), but people easily mistake 'square' for 'root of...' or 'raised to the power of...'; hence one can see a certain uninformed logic in saying the '8th square' of something meaning the '8th power' of something.

HERBET Abel May 23, 2014:

How do you stick to the "five square" ?

Tony M May 23, 2014:

@ Abel Are you sure you got that sum right?

If there are 5 legs per level, and there are 8 levels, that surely makes just 8 × 5 = 40

I think it's more about permutations of any 1 from 5 multiplied by any one from 5 on every other level; now THAT would work out as 5 raised to the power of 8 (the 8th power of 5) — and if the $1 commission was to be paid on each of those, then it would yield a tidy sum.

Of course, we have no idea what these 'legs' or 'levels' are, so we can't even begin to imagine what might or might not be a plausible scenario.

HERBET Abel May 23, 2014:

Mon point de vue:
Il y a 5 "legs" par niveau et il y a 8 niveaux .
Chaque niveau est donc 5 x8
Pour 5 niveaux on a 5x(5x_8) donc 25 x 8 ????

Tony M May 23, 2014:

@ Abel The whole thing appears like one great big typoe; however, there is a certain logic to the whole thing, since we talk of 'X raised to the eighth power', 'the eighth root of X', 'X to the eighth', etc.

HERBET Abel May 23, 2014:

pourquoi "eighth" et pas "eight" : typo ????

Geneviève Ghenne (asker) May 23, 2014:

Yurk! :-) :-) Oh nooooo... not on a Friday please... :-)

I'll get back to the client... this is not clear to me either ...
Thank you

Anca Florescu-Mitchell May 23, 2014:

@ Tony You made me laugh, and you are probably right, as that would make more sense than 5 x 5 x 8! But still... maybe the asker can help with some input about what they are calculating.

Tony M May 23, 2014:

Sounds crazy to me! I feel sure what they mean is '5 raised to the power of 8', but I have never in all my life seen it expressed that way! Often written as 5^8, and means 5 × 5 × 5 × 5 × 5 × 5 × 5 × 5 × 5 × 5

Note that we do talk about the '8th root of X', so maybe someone just thought we could use the same syntax for the '8th square of X' — personally, I've never seen this before.