The first step a math tutor would suggest 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:
42 x 42 x 42 x 42 x ... (for a total of 98 times) = 1197927290822766857443335626713783442006166854146020442893694974144878072491778785537536880800539575494347684380913922332698224803393506703350878908551092240384
Therefore, 42 to the power of 98 is 1197927290822766857443335626713783442006166854146020442893694974144878072491778785537536880800539575494347684380913922332698224803393506703350878908551092240384.