The big difference between exponentiation and addition / multiplication is that it is non commutative. This means there are two inverses. The relations between

The big difference between exponentiation and addition / multiplication is that it is non commutative. This means there are two inverses. The relations between them are not very easy to learn. Using this as a teaching tool could help a lot in explaining this kind of stuff. I remember back I high-school whenever I met these kinds of problems I would just write everything back into powers and solve the equations in that setting. Because otherwise just dealing with all the interacting and different operations was too annoying. I could see this notation essentially doing that for everyone. Now, I made it through high-school, and got a degree in math. I think it would be better if more people made it through high school math without hating it. Making logarithms, exponents and roots clearer might help do that.