This is the post. The title has usually been "How do I calculate square root in Python?", but the body is actually about a problem that's specific to division in Python 2 (namely that 1/2 is 0, not 0.5). So if you're not using Python 2 (which you shouldn't be since it's EOL), the top answer and most of the second answer are useless for you, but unfortunately due to the title, the question has solidified into the canonical question about square root in Python.
There have been multiple edits to change the title, but OP has rolled back all of them:
- "Why does raising to a fractional power sometimes give the wrong answer?"
- "How do I calculate square root in Python without using math.sqrt?"
- "Why does a fractional power give the wrong result while a float works?"
- "Why does Python give the "wrong" answer for square root?"
(Full disclosure: I've made some of these edits, including the one today.)
On the other hand, with the changed title, we don't have a canonical question for square root in Python.
So, I'm thinking, is there a way we could split the post into two separate posts? They're both good questions in their own right, so I'd love OP to get credit for them, but having them smushed together makes no sense. We'd have to split the answers too of course; some only cover the Python 2 issue while others only cover the generic question.
Otherwise, what other options do we have? How should we handle this? Maybe we could make a community wiki question?
P.S. I'd be happy to roll back my edits today while we discuss this, in the spirit of BRD.
Update: A mod has closed the post as a duplicate of Python division gets rounded to an integer?, which seems like a good move. That leaves us with what to do about a canonical square root question. I'm strongly leaning towards writing my own community wiki.