Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by toby 2216 days ago
n^0 is also an exponent. Do you consider constant time to be exponential growth?
1 comments

When family talks to me about covid spreading exponentially I am pretty sure they mean n times n, or n^2

Yes we all know the technical definitions with respect to software and algorithmic complexity. But the lack of sympathy/empathy on display with how a common definition of a word can be misconstrued by someone without an academic background in tech is kind of surprising (ok well maybe not so surprising but c'mon folks, we are all human)

disease spread when modeled is actually exponential.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number#Esti...