A fictitious example might make it more conceivable what exponential growth means. Which job offer would you choose?
The first offer proposes 1000 Dollars per week. No bad pay, is it. The proposal of the second offer consists of 1 cent in the first week, 2 cents in the second, 4 cents in the third, 8 cents in the fourth week aso. – every week he receives the double amount of the previous week. Someone who makes his decision in favor of this offer might be called nuts.
After 12 weeks Mr A has already earned 12’000 Dollars, while Mr B has only earned 41 Dollars. In the 20th week however, Mr B has already earned 10’500 $ and just a week later he has attained Mr A’s level. After 26 weeks – that is half a year later – the first one has earned 26’000 Dollars and the second 671’000 Dollars.
If the experiment runs 39 weeks – that is three quarters of a year, Mr B would already have earned 5.5 Billion Dollars and after a whole year, he would have earned 45’000 Billion Dollars – about 22 times the annual Gross Domestic Product of Germany!