Table of Contents

• Part I: Introduction
• 1: Word of the Day
• 2: Two bank accounts
• 3: Graphing your money
• 4: Graphing fruit fly populations
• 5: "Exponential" is not always "fast"
• Part II: Exponential Growth and Shrinkage
• 6: How to calculate next year's population
• 7: Using exponents
• 8: Problems using exponents
• 9: Negative rates = Shrinkage
• 10: Shortcut for exponential shrinkage
• 11: A quick review of exponential models
• Part III: Practice Problems
• 12: Drug dosage
• 13: Caffeine withdrawal
• 14: Growth of the computer industry
• 15: Viral growth
• 16: Wind energy
• 17: Ecology
• 18: Human population growth

Word of the Day

In this module, we're going to talk about "exponential growth" -- the kind of increase demonstrated by both fruit flies and savings accounts (although sadly fruit flies have been multiplying faster than bank balances lately).

“Exponentially” will be the word of the day today.  Besides flies and piggy banks, we’ll find out that most organisms can be described by exponential growth if they are not limited by resources.  Many other quantities grow exponentially, including the federal debt, wind power, and computer memory.  We’ll compare exponential and non-exponential growth, and we’ll find out that populations can shrink exponentially as well (things like bank accounts, caffeine in your bloodstream, and endangered populations).

So let’s get started...