Exponentiation
When it is a positive integer, the exponent indicates how many copies of the base are multiplied together. For example, . The base appears times in the repeated multiplication, because the exponent is . Here, is the "base", is the "exponent", and is the "power" or, more specifically, "3 raised to the 5th power".
Exponential function
Since changing the base of the exponential function merely results in the appearance of an additional constant factor, it is computationally convenient to reduce the study of exponential functions in mathematical analysis to the study of this particular function, conventionally called the "natural exponential function", or simply, "the exponential function" and denoted by