Exponentiation
Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as , involving two numbers, the "base" and the "exponent" . When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to repeated multiplication of the base: that is, is the product of multiplying bases:
Exponential function
For the real exponential function is a constant and the derivative is zero because formula_3 for positive and the real exponential functions are monotonically increasing (as depicted for and ), because the derivative is greater than zero for all arguments, and for they are monotonically decreasing (as depicted for ), because the derivative is less than zero for all arguments.