Precalculus: A Study of Functions and Their Applications is written in a conversational format addressed to the student that students are expected to read. To aid in this process, reading questions are incorporated throughout each section in which students are asked to write about key concepts and do simple problems.  The following are part of the reading questions that appear in Section 2.2: Exponential Functions.

1. How is a linear function similar to an exponential function?  How is a linear function different than an exponential function?
2. Let f be the exponential function f(x) = 3 × 4^x. What is the y-intercept? What is the growth factor?
3. Let f(x) = a^x such that f(1) = 6. What is the value of a?  How do you know?
4. Let f(x) = a^x. In the following graph of f, is a greater than one or less than one?  How do you know?

5. Give the equation for the exponential function whose y-intercept is 2 and whose growth factor is 5
6. In the chicken bacteria example from this section we noted that the bacteria doubles every 6 hours, explain why this is equivalent to a sixteen fold increase each day.