Question

At a yearly basketball tournament, 84 different teams complete, after each round of the tournament, one-fourth of the team remain.

Create a function which models the above scenario and explain how you arrived at each part of the function

Answer 1

84*(1/4)^x

Explanation:

84 is the constant as it is the starting amount. However each round (x because the amount of rounds is constantly changing) divides the team by 4 or multiplies by 1/4 (Reciprocal).

So, if you wanted to see if the amount of teams after three rounds you would do:

84 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4. However, any number times itself is an exponent, so we would simplify to 84³. But due to the fact we do not know how many rounds we are going to calculate we change the exponent to x.