title: Built in double-asterisk power function not working as expected
body: <p>This prints -2.4:</p>
  
  <pre><code>print(-3**0.8)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But this prints an imaginary number...?</p>
  
  <pre><code>a = -3
  b = 0.8
  print(a**b)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can't figure out what is causing this and this problem is breaking my program. How do you make it so that the second statement outputs the same as the first in a general case that works for positive and negative values for <code>a</code>?</p>