Exponential growth in big-o notation

Question

I have got problem about understanding the following question. It says:

Prove that exponential functions have different orders of growth for different values of base.

It looks to me like for example, consider aⁿ. If a=3, its growth rate will be larger than when a=2. It looks obvious. Is that really what the question wants? How can i do a formal proof for that?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

f(n) ∈ O(g(n)) means there are positive constants c and k, such that 0 ≤ f(n) ≤ cg(n) for all n ≥ k. The values of c and k must be fixed for the function f and must not depend on n.

Let 1>a>b without loss of generality, and suppose b^n ∈ O(a^n). This implies that there are positive constants c and k such that 0 ≤ b^n ≤ c.a^n for all n ≥ k, which is impossible :
b^n ≤ c.a^n for all n ≥ k implies (b/a)^n ≤ c for all n ≥ k
which is in contradiction with lim (b/a)^n = +inf because b/a>1.

If 1>a>b then b^n ∉ O(a^n), but a^n ∈ O(b^n) so O(a^n)⊊O(b^n)