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Explain why these expressions are equivalent:


0.5^(x-2)



(0.5^(2) )/(0.5^(x) )

1 Answer

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These are not equivalent.

If x=1, then


0.5^(1-2) = 0.5^(-1) = 2

but


(0.5^2)/(0.5^1) = 0.5^1 = 0.5

and those are not the same.

But if you were asking why
0.5^(x-2) = (0.5^(x))/(0.5^(2)), then the reason is this:


\begin{aligned}0.5^(x-2) &= 0.5^(x) \cdot 0.5^(-2) \\[0.7em]&= 0.5^(x) \cdot (1)/(0.5^(2)) &\\[0.7em]&= (0.5^(x))/(0.5^(2))\end{aligned}

User Gokhan Kurt
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