How do you determine if the equation #y= 5(0.9)^x# represents exponential growth or decay?
1 Answer
Decay.
Explanation:
It all depends on the base of the exponential. We divide two cases: if
Otherwise, if
Note that we're not considering negative bases, because
The reason is very simple: if
#(m/n)^2 = (m*m)/(n*n)# #(m/n)^3 = (m*m*m)/(n*n*n)#
And so on. As you can see, the denominator grows faster than the numerator, since
The case