CAT Quant: SURDS & INDICES

Posted by: catindiaonline | October 25, 2008

CAT Quant: SURDS & INDICES

Indices

As you should know from GCSE, $x 3$ is a shortening of $x \times x \times x$ . In the same way, any number to the power of n is that number multiplied by itself n times. To describe more detail, in the expression $x 3$ , the $x$ is referred to as the base, and the 3 as the exponent.

By always reducing the expression back to its basic parts it is possible to come to conclusions about how to treat numbers raised to powers in algebra.

Multiplication

When you multiply indices you add the exponents together.

As you can see $x^3 \times x^2 = x^{3+2} = x^5$ .

Division

Division is, as expected, the opposite to multiplication. When you divide indices you subtract the exponents from each other.

$\frac{x^4}{x^2} = \frac{x \times x \times x \times x}{x \times x} = \frac{\not \! x \times \not \! x \times x\times x}{\not \! x \times \not \! x} = x \times x = x^2$

Again this shows that $\frac{x^4}{x^2} = x^{4-2} = x^2$

Negative powers

Having done the above division, we begin to ask ourselves what happens when we have a fraction that has a higher exponent on the bottom than the top.

Using the trusted method of showing each x seperately we obtain:

For rest go to CAT India Online’s CATclub

Advertisements

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: aimcat, CAT 2007 paper, cat 2007 question paper, CAT 2007 Topper, cat 2009, cat 2009 pattern, cat exam, cat india online, CAT mock papers, cat mock test papers, CAT Notes, cat online test, cat paper, cat paper 2007, cat papers, cat practice papers, cat practise papers, CAT previous paper, cat previous year papers, CAT Quant, CAT queries, cat test papers, CAT Toppers, catindiaonline, download mock cat with solution, e-books on mba, free cat notes, how to solve critical reasoning, maths tricks to crack cat, MBA, mba mock papers download, mock cat, mock cat 2008 questions, mock cat paper, mock cat papers, mock cat test, mock cat test papers, mock mba exam, mock papers for cat, mock practice papers for cat 2009, my cat exam experience, online cat papers, online cat test, previous mock cats for download, reading comprehension for cat, sentence correction for cat, SURDS & INDICES, ten best cat books, test funda, toppers stratgies to crack cat exam

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Sep				Nov »
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

CAT India Online: Best MBA exam guide