[ceejayoz]

My high school math teacher introduced exponential growth by asking the class if we'd take $1M now or $0.01 doubled daily for a month. We, as most people do, wanted the $1M, but the penny turns into more than $5M.

Had to explain this to someone yesterday. They literally wouldn't believe me until I screenshotted an Excel spreadsheet of the daily doublings, despite a finance degree.

[ellius]

I think that's exactly the issue. People can't picture it. You can show them a curve on a graph, but that doesn't translate for people without a mathematical/scientific background into "a shitload of people will get ill very quickly." Our brains seem not to be very well wired to make the connection between mathematical abstractions and reality, and aside from the minority of people who seem to just "get it," people don't understand without a good explanation from a very good teacher.

[mindslight]

We technology people don't just inherently "get it", but rather have experience traveling up and down in powers of two for things that are meaningful to us. A month has 30 days - that's easily recognizable as a giga (2^10 ~= 10^3). And a billion isn't even that large to us.