Exponents

Exponent, refers to number of times a number is multiplied by itself. Its also refered as the power of the number.

Exponents Examples

Example: Calculate 5³ ?
The trick here is to just multiply, 5 with itself 3 times, 5 x 5 x 5 = 125

or, the same can be written as, Calculate 5 to the power of 3 ?

Real World Use Cases of Exponents

Usually, people dont use exponents on their day to day calculation except mathmatician or other professionals. Exponents can really be helpful in representing a large or small value elegantely.

Use Case 1: A Terabyte = 1099511627776 bytes can be written as 1024⁴, which is more readable and understandable.

Terabyte represented in Exponential Form

Another very important use case of exponents is in calculating Exponential Growth of something.

Use Case 2:Scientist's, Microbiologist's and other professionals use exponents to calculate exponential growth. Say, if a Bacteria grows into 100 Bacteria in 1 minute. How many Bacteria will be present in 10 minutes ?

Exponents Example - Showing Exponential Growth of Bacteria in 10 minutes

Wow, the numeber is huge, the Bacteria grows very fast, if it was not for exponents we wouldn't be effectively & quickly be able to execute these calculations.

Use Case 3:Exponents are also leveraged in the Compound Interest Calculations. Where the money grows exponentionally after a period of time, as you saw in the bacteria example above, exponantial growth is a monster in itself, Warren Buffet world one of the best investors used compounding to buid most of his wealth.