Exponents

Exponents are... annoying and I'm not all that great with them BUT this is the first blog I've done in... uh.. a while so bear with me!

There are several rules to exponents that are not necessarily difficult if you do them in the proper order. I'm going to work the following problem to give you an idea of how many different steps a problem may take to simplify.

(3^-2 + 3^-3)^-1 (Order of Operations states to deal with the stuff inside the () first)
(1/6 + 1/9)^-1 (Because the exponents were negative I took the recipricol and dealt with the exponent in the denomenator. After that add the fractions.)
(5/18)^-1 (Because there is a negative exponent on the outside, of the parenthesis you will take the recipricol of the fraction.)
(18/5) = Answer

~ Parrish