The first step is to understand what it means when a number has an exponent. The “power” of a number indicates how many times the base would be multiplied by itself to reach the correct value.
The second step is to write the number in the base-exponent form, and lastly calculate what the final result would be. Consider the example of 2 to the power of 4: in exponent form that would be
So re-applying these steps to our particular problem, we first convert our word problem to a base-exponent form of:
To simplify this, all that is needed is to multiply it out:
71 x 71 x 71 x 71 x ... (for a total of 50 times) = 365525294722252962118766811943425968476232219186763957871703669276750377377622354857463806001
Therefore, 71 to the power of 50 is 365525294722252962118766811943425968476232219186763957871703669276750377377622354857463806001.