I am reading about evolutionary psychology and how we humans have evolved to become the way we are.
Exponential Growth is not something we are hardwired to compute, imagine or guesstimate
If someone told you to quickly choose between :
1) receiving Rs 5000 each day for 30 days or ;
2) getting 1 paisa on day 1, 2 paise on day 2 , 4 paise on day 3, 8 paise on day 4 and so on for 30 days ….
I am sure most will choose to earn Rs 1,50,000/-
We’d be making a mistake as the 2nd option gives us a crore.
There is a story about King Vikramaditya who was very generous and proud of it. An old Brahmin came outside his palace and recited some poetry. The King called him and asked him what he wanted as a reward for pleasing him. At the time the king was playing chess. The Brahmin asked him for some uncooked rice. He said he would like one grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard and then on every subsequent square to double the number of grains of rice. The King immediately granted his request guessing it would take about a few handfuls at best.
As the exercise commenced, the King soon realised that it would amount to more rice than was grown on earth !
Let us learn to compute well and to make our projections and plans with arithmetical rigour.