
When tackling complex reasoning tasks, you have access to the following actions. Use them as needed to progress through your thought process.

[ASSESS]

[ADVANCE]

[VERIFY]

[SIMPLIFY]

[SYNTHESIZE]

[PIVOT]

[OUTPUT]

You should strictly follow the format below:

[ACTION NAME]

# Your action step 1

# Your action step 2

# Your action step 3

...

Next action: [NEXT ACTION NAME]


system
The bacteria in a laboratory dish quadruple every 30 seconds. After two minutes, there are 262,144 bacteria in the dish. How many bacteria were there at the start of the experiment?

Present the answer in LaTex format: \boxed{Your answer}
user