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".
LIANTI
Shown in the figure is a simulation to illustrate the advantages of linear amplification over exponential amplification, assuming two DNA fragments A and B with replication yields of 100% and 70% per round, respectively. First, linear amplification is more even than exponential amplification. To achieve ~10,000 fold amplification of fragment A, exponential amplification results in a ratio of 8:1, hampering the accuracy of CNV detection. In contrast, linear amplification exhibits a ratio of 1:0.7, which is much closer to unity. Second, linear amplification is superior to exponential amplification in fidelity. In exponential amplification, errors generated in early cycles of amplification will be propagated permanently, leading to SNV false-positives. In contrast, in linear amplification, the errors would appear randomly at different locations in the amplicons to be easily filtered out.