Difference between math.pow and **

[perfringo]

Additional bit of information from Python documentation which could help to avoid some pitfalls down the road:

The power operator binds more tightly than unary operators on its left; it binds less tightly than unary operators on its right. /../

Thus, in an unparenthesized sequence of power and unary operators, the operators are evaluated from right to left (this does not constrain the evaluation order for the operands): -1**2 results in -1.