I can't interpret what he's done. A guess would be that he thinks ^ is the same thing as *. You have correctly stated that 4^4 = 256 and then you just add on the 1/2. You mean 4*4*4*4 and he means 4*4. That's a hard error to correct, but do your best.
In order to figure out what number 1500 is 5% of, take 1500 and divide it by 5% (0.05). The answer is the salesman would have to sell $30,000 to make $1500 in commission.
