Thread: Five raisied to the nth power of 2

Hi,

I hope this is in the right place. There probably is a very simple answer to the question I have but here goes.

I understand raising to the power but I don't understand the two following statements that are in my programming book; more specifically I do not know how I would write them down on paper.

Five raised to the first power of 2 is 25
Five raised to the second power of 2 is 125

It's confusing me because I know 5^2 is 25 and that 5^3 is 125 so how can "Five raised to the second power of 2 be 125" and how would I express it in laymans terms?

My math isn't great so please keep it simplish!

And thanks in advance!

Originally Posted by philuk2000

Five raised to the first power of 2 is 25
Five raised to the second power of 2 is 125
It's confusing me because I know 5^2 is 25 and that 5^3 is 125 so how can "Five raised to the second power of 2 be 125" and how would I express it in laymans terms?

It is very awkward to say "Five raised to the second power of 2 "
Because you probably mean . So you have .

Now five to the third power is

But , read "5 to the third power of 2.

NOTE that

Originally Posted by Plato

It is very awkward to say "Five raised to the second power of 2 "
Because you probably mean . So you have .

Now five to the third power is

But , read "5 to the third power of 2.

NOTE that

Blimey! So how do I enter that on a calculator, or more so how is that represented without using the ^ symbol (i.e. like 5x5x5x5 etc.)

Also is "Five raised to the second power of 2 is 125" wrong in the book?

I didn't understand this bit with the funny equals sign. NOTE that and when I enter on my calculator i get 15625 so i'm doing something wrong.

Thanks for your help by the way!

Originally Posted by philuk2000

So how do I enter that on a calculator, or more so how is that represented without using the ^ symbol (i.e. like 5x5x5x5 etc.

I do not know much about calculators. But in computer algebra we could enter 5^(2^3) using parentheses where needed.

Originally Posted by philuk2000

Also is "Five raised to the second power of 2 is 125" wrong in the book?

Again, I do not know the vocabulary of your textbook, or language.
I would read "Five raised to the second power of 2" as .

Originally Posted by Plato

I do not know much about calculators. But in computer algebra we could enter 5^(2^3) using parentheses where needed.

Interesting, I was entering it as (5^2)^3 now that's making more sense with that answer now.

Again, I do not know the vocabulary of your textbook, or language.

It's a C programming book in English.

I would read "Five raised to the second power of 2" as .

Yes that's exactly how I'm reading it which is why i'm confused why the book states it as 25 and 125 on each line.

The exercise is to write a program that prints 5 raised to the first five powers of 2 and the output of each line is in the format "Five raised to the nth power of 2 is x"

The difficulty is that I cannot use loops or a mod operator and have to print the line individually.

I haven't worked it out yet and the wording hasn't helped

Again, thank you very much for the help.