Calculate Power - codepath/compsci_guides GitHub Wiki

Unit 1 Session 1 (Click for link to problem statements)

U-nderstand

Understand what the interviewer is asking for by using test cases and questions about the problem.

• Will exponent always be positive?
  • Yes, you can assume both base and exponent are positive integers.

P-lan

Plan the solution with appropriate visualizations and pseudocode.

General Idea: Create a function that takes parameters base and exponent and uses repeated multiplication to calculate the exponent.

1) Create a variable to store the total exponent
2) By default, set the total exponent to be the same as `base`
2) Loop `exponent` times, and each time multiply the total by the base
3) Return the total variable

I-mplement

def power(base, exponent):
	total = base
	for i in range(1, exponent + 1):
		total = total * base
	return total