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positive square root

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg58684] positive square root
• From: "paulvonhippel at yahoo" <paulvonhippel at yahoo.com>
• Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 02:49:10 -0400 (EDT)
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I work in a world where the square root is always a positive number.
But Mathematica allows for the possibility of negative square roots.
Two questions arise:

(1) Is there a way to tell Mathematica that I'm only interested in
positive square roots?

(2) My current solution is to use, e.g., Abs[Sqrt[z]]. But when
Mathematica echoes this, it puts the Abs function *under* the radical,
so it looks like Sqrt[Abs[z]]. Is this a bug in the display?