calculator question

[cristina.cardenal]

if you are raising a number to a high exponent, is there a short cut or do you just multiply the number times itself for as many times as need be - ie. in compound interest 12,000 compounded quarterly for 3 years at 14% it ends up being 12000X1.035^12...any way to quicken this or just multiply 1.035 and itself 12 times...? memory on the calculator wouldn't help bc that only refers to addition and subtraction.

thanks

[jen]

There isn't a shortcut, since there's no "power" button (on my TI-73, looks like "^").

However, I have a hard time imagining a GRE problem that would really require you to punch a number in 12 times. For that reason, the multiple-choice answer to the problem you describe would probably just appear as 12000X1.035^12.

[amanvij.1989]

Ya there isn't any ^ button though ,there is one easier solution to do long power calculation

Let take an example 1.01^12

a method to do this is find 1.01^4 and multiply it 3 times
as (x)^12=((x)^4)^3)

total of 7 multiplication so,it would save 3 multiplication
This is not big one but would avoid mistake during long multiplication

But as Jen said multiple problems does'nt have a simplified value.

[esledge]

Good suggestion, amanvij.1989. The highest power I can remember needing to actually calculate on the GRE was the 6th, and even for that it would make sense to calculate x^6 in stages as you suggest, at least to double check the result of simply multiplying 6 times, as mistyping can happen to anyone.