# Divide and Conquer to find a power

I understand the concept behind Divide and Conquer, making one problem into sub problems and then merging the solutions together. However, from looking at a past paper a question has occured where it asks how 2^11 can be found using Divide and Conquer, I'm just confused how finding a power can be divided into sub problems =/

pow(2, 11) = 2 * pow(2, 5) * pow(2, 5)

pow(2, 5) = 2 * pow(2, 2) * pow(2,2)

pow(2, 2) = pow(2, 1) * pow(2, 1)

pow(2, 1) = 2

would this be correct?

• Other than $pow(2, 0)$ being $0$ that seems correct. – Tom van der Zanden Jan 2 '15 at 15:04

• If $n$ is even, $n=2k$, we have $a^n = a^{2k}=a^ka^k = a^{n/2}a^{n/2} = (a^{n/2})^2$
• If $n$ is odd, $n=2k+1$, we have $a^n=a^{2k+1}=a^1a^{2k}=a(a^ka^k)=a(a^{(n-1)/2})^2$
In other words, we have $$a^n=\begin{cases} (a^{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor})^2 &\text{if n is even}\\ a(a^{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor})^2 &\text{if n is odd} \end{cases}$$ You've computed $pow(a, n)$ by changing it to a problem involving an instance of the half-sized problem $pow(a, n/2)$ along with a squaring and possibly a multiplication by $a$.