How do you determine if the equation #y = 4^x# represents exponential growth or decay?

1 Answer
Mar 16, 2018

I tried this:

Explanation:

You can try by substituting values of #x# that are "easy" to use and increasing in value.

Try these:

#x=0# then #y=4^0=1#
#x=1# then #y=4^1=4#
#x=2# then #y-4^2=16#
#x=3# then #y=4^3=64#
and so on...

you can immediately see that increasing #x# leads to an increase in the value of your function #y#; so, you have an exponential growth.