[maurile]

Well, you guys are no fun.

Even though Google and Excel return an answer of 25, that's contrary to standard convention.

By convention, exponentiation has priority over multiplication, and the unary minus is considered to be a multiplicative operator (converting the operand to its opposite by multiplying by negative one).

Many people read -5^2 as taking negative five and squaring it. But in fact there is no negative five in that expression. The thing that's negative is five squared, not five. The squaring comes first, then the negativing. (Yes, I am making up words.)

It's funny how adamant some people are, however, that -5^2 - 25, and that there's no other legitimate way of doing it.