Exponents are much easier to do than they seem. For example, in the expression 4^3, the number 4 is the base and 3 is the exponent. Because 4 is the base, you multiply 4 by itself 3 times. If you would write it out it would look like 4*4*4. The answer to this would be 64.

You may also see a problem like this; (5^2)^3. This looks very complicated, but it’s actually really simple. You’re raising the exponent to another exponent, so you multiply the two exponents together. To solve this problem you would first multiply the 2 and the 3 to get 6. This would make the problem 5^6. Now you would just solve it like a regular exponent. You could write it as 5*5*5*5*5*5. The answer to this would be 15,625.

Something else you may see is a negative exponent. The problem would look similar to this; 3^-4. You can do a problem like this in two different ways. The way I like to do it is to first invert the base. This means that the number you would multiply by itself would be 1/3. By inverting it, you can now ignore the negative. Your problem would look like 1/3^4 or 1/3*1/3*1/3*1/3 and the answer would be 1/81. You can also solve this by just doing 3^4 and inverting it when you’re done. So you would multiply 3*3*3*3 and then invert it so that it would be a fraction and you can forget the negative sign. All you need to do when multiplying with a negative is invert the number so that it is a fraction. Remember that a whole number is just like a fraction where 1 is the denominator.