EXPONENTIAL GROWTH
The main thing to recognize about exponential growth is that it’s fast—the
fastest growth you can imagine. You know at the beginning of those zombie
movies where the research guy with crazy hair and glasses starts raving about
how quickly the zombie-making virus is spreading through the world
population? And the red dots on his screen start multiplying from one or two
cities to dozens and then hundreds within a few seconds, and soon the whole
world is red? That’s exponential growth in a nutshell. Here’s a sample graph of
what exponential growth looks like. Notice that the curve starts off slowly and
then explodes upward!