-0.6^1.5
is not the same as (-0.6)^1.5
.
From help("^")
:
Users are sometimes surprised by the value returned, for example why (-8)^(1/3) is NaN. For double inputs, R makes use of IEC 60559 arithmetic on all platforms, together with the C system function pow for the ^ operator. The relevant standards define the result in many corner cases. In particular, the result in the example above is mandated by the C99 standard. On many Unix-alike systems the command man pow gives details of the values in a large number of corner cases.
What do you want the result to be?