Statistics

[jonjel]

Here is one to amuse you Exco with your mathematical brain. Not mine, heard it on the radio.

If you ask the average person to following:

If I gave you a pound on the first of the month, two pounds on the second, four on the third and kept doubling it how much would you have by the end of the month?

Most people would say, 'I dunno, 100,000?

The answer is apparently - and I have not worked it out. about a billion!

It was a way someone explained the uncontrolled unchecked spread of a pandemic.

[excoriator]

Yes, that's exponential growth for you 2^30 = 1,073,741,824. Theres a similar story about the inventor of chess as king as a reward from the emporor, a single grain of rice for the first, 2 for the second, four for the third and so on until the 64th.

"Granted" said the emperor. Only to realise that he had given away all the rice in China for the next thousand years. He solved the problem by executing the inventor.

Exponential growth is famously hard to estimate!