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Exponential growth is a process that increases quantity over time at an ever-increasing rate. It occurs when the instantaneous rate of change (that is, the derivative) of a quantity with respect to time is proportional to the quantity itself. Described as a function, a quantity undergoing exponential growth is an exponential function of time ...
Note the consequence of the law of large numbers: with more atoms, the overall decay is more regular and more predictable. A half-life often describes the decay of discrete entities, such as radioactive atoms. In that case, it does not work to use the definition that states "half-life is the time required for exactly half of the entities to decay".
The doubling time is a characteristic unit (a natural unit of scale) for the exponential growth equation, and its converse for exponential decay is the half-life. As an example, Canada's net population growth was 2.7 percent in the year 2022, dividing 72 by 2.7 gives an approximate doubling time of about 27 years.
Biological exponential growth. Biological exponential growth is the unrestricted growth of a population of organisms, occurring when resources in its habitat are unlimited. Most commonly apparent in species that reproduce quickly and asexually, like bacteria, exponential growth is intuitive from the fact that each organism can divide and ...
Exponential decay. A quantity undergoing exponential decay. Larger decay constants make the quantity vanish much more rapidly. This plot shows decay for decay constant () of 25, 5, 1, 1/5, and 1/25 for from 0 to 5. A quantity is subject to exponential decay if it decreases at a rate proportional to its current value.
To the right is the long tail, and to the left are the few that dominate (also known as the 80–20 rule ). In statistics, a power law is a functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a relative change in the other quantity proportional to a power of the change, independent of the initial ...
RGR is a concept relevant in cases where the increase in a state variable over time is proportional to the value of that state variable at the beginning of a time period. In terms of differential equations, if is the current size, and its growth rate, then relative growth rate is. . If the RGR is constant, i.e., , a solution to this equation is.
Logarithmic growth is the inverse of exponential growth and is very slow. A familiar example of logarithmic growth is a number, N, in positional notation, which grows as log b (N), where b is the base of the number system used, e.g. 10 for decimal arithmetic. In more advanced mathematics, the partial sums of the harmonic series