Strange behavior of R

Question

So, I have the following code in R:

y
a <- -0.1    
test <- (1/((y+as.numeric(!y))*(a-1)))  
test  
test^a  
-0.9090909^a 

Giving me the

Answer 1

-0.9090909 ^ a is the same as -(0.9090909 ^ a). Notice the parentheses.

However, your test contains negative values, and you cannot take the root of a negative number. Try (-0.9090909) ^ a to verify this:

> (-0.9090909) ^ -0.1
[1] NaN