Computing the exponent of a number $($i$.$e$.,$ nk$)$ can take O$($n$)$ time if done by simply multiplying by n$,$ k number of times. A logarithmic way for computing exponents is by using the idea of successive squaring. For instance, rather than computing n$8$ as: n $*$ n $*$ n $*$ n $*$ n $*$ n $*$ n $*$ n$,$ we can compute it by repeatedly squaring, beginning with n$,$ computing n$2,$ n$4$ and finally n$8.$ In general, the algorithm would do the following: