Math exponent word problem.

Question

Tim reads a book. On Monday he reads 3 pages. On each day after that, he reads 3 times the number of pages that he read on the previous day. How many pages does he read on Thursday?

Answer 1

We can do this problem in two ways. One is the straight forward multiplication according to the parameters set here. The second way, perhaps more challenging and rewarding way, is to set a formula for this problem, and plug in these parameters. Let's start with the former.

3 books are read on Monday. If Tuesday's books read will equal 3 times the number read on Monday, that means 9 books are read on Tuesday. Same for Wednesday, 27 books will be read. So on Thursday, 81 books will be read.

The second way is to think of this problem as an expression of an exponent. Exponents are superscripts numbers that indicate how many times a number is multiplied by itself. Each day can be thought of as increasing that exponent superscript -- Monday is 1, Tuesday is 2, Wednesday is 3, and Thursday is 4. These numbers represent what would go as the exponent above 3. It's helpful to consider this problem from this perspective, because they could have asked you how many books does Tim read in 18 days -- and it might be more confusing doing the first method (although that'd be a huge number in either case).