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Software engineers are facing an 'identity crisis bordering on depression,' Menlo Ventures partner says
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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Where I come from, that's read as "x to the [power of] minus one". "x minus one" is, well, x - 1. Not the same thing at all.
(I admit, my chances of deciphering what you meant might not have been all that high even if you'd used the correct phrasing, but without it, the chance was zero.)
It was a shorthand he used, he wrote it as a superscript, it must of been his own, it was useful in terms of statistics analysis. Don't worry too much about your ability to decipher things, from your mathematical explanation I imagine it's something you have had to carry all of your life.
It has been a LONG time since I did any real math and never took statistics, but wouldn't x^(-1) just be 1/(x)? I don't know if that equates to "everything that isn't x". I feel like there's a specific way to write that, but a negative exponent is not that, I don't think, but also I have no idea.
I looked it up. Looks like this stuff is maybe from set theory? Which I sooorrrrt of remember doing at some point?
My best guess is your professor either said something from this, or you misremembered, or I'm totally off base and I'm still curious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complement_(set_theory)
We may also be separated by a common llanguage—"lecturer" isn't a word that's much used in Canada. I've only encountered it as a Briticism.