We seem primed to understand linear growth, but lots of processes in finance, ecology, physics and other fields depend on exponential growth.
Here's a simple visualization to help conceptualize this type of growth. It starts off doubling with every step. Adjust the rate to see tripling and quadrupling.
steps: 4 speed: 5Most of us already have an intuition for linear growth. In the example below, each step adds a fixed amount to the total.
With exponential growth, on the other hand, each step multiplies the total by a fixed amount. So, exponentiation is repeated multiplication in the same way that linear growth is repeated addition.
The following is a naive model of the spread of a virus in a population. The number of infected individuals grows exponentially up until the virus runs out of people to infect.
For more explanations, visit the Explained Visually project homepage.
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