Question

Carol shares a joke with 3 of her friends. The next day, each of her friends tell the joke to 4 other people. The next day, each people that heard the joke the previous day tells the joke to four different people. The expression 3(4^(x)) models this situation where x represents the number of days after Carol initally told the joke. What do the different parts of the expression represent?

Answer 1

Explanation:

In this expression, the number 3 represents the initial group of friends to whom Carol told the joke.

The base number 4 represents the number of people each friend told the joke to on the following day.

The exponent x represents the number of days that have passed since Carol first told the joke, and as a result, the number of "generations" of people who have heard the joke.

Therefore, 4 raised to the power of x represents the total number of people who have heard the joke after x days, including Carol's initial group of friends and all subsequent generations of people who have been told the joke by those who heard it before.

Finally, multiplying 3 and 4 raised to the power of x gives the total number of unique people who have heard the joke after x days, since the initial group of friends is not included in the later generations.