Today on my drive into school, I was informed by a heating company that fuel prices are - “as we all know” - increasing “exponentially” this heating season. I’m sure that the guy who was talking in the advertisement was trying to use the phrase “exponentially” as some kind of overstatement - but I think he overdid it.
If fuel prices have doubled in the last 3 months - and heating prices are growing exponentially - then lets see what would happen. Assume that 3 months ago, the fuel to heat your home would cost you $100. Today, that fuel would cost you $200. The “exponential” equation to model this would be e^(ln(2)*t/90) (t in days). According to this exponential growth model, in 3 more months, that same fuel would cost you $400. Three months after that, $800. A year from today, the fuel to heat your house would cost you $3,325. Two years from today, $55,299.06. Three years from today, that fuel would cost you about a $919,520. Four years from today: $15,289,929.43. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps in four years, we will all have to pay fifteen-million dollars to heat our homes.
According to this guy - in 9 years the ENTIRE GDP of the United States of America (yes, all $11,750,000,000,000) will be required to heat your home. [That's using the current GDP - not taking into account how the GDP will drop once we all have to drop millions into heating our homes]
November 1st, 2005 at 6:38 pm
Redo your two year figure.
I love (read “hate”) the general public’s liberal use of the work “exponential.”
November 1st, 2005 at 8:53 pm
Woops. I forgot to change that figure when I switched from using a starting cost of $10 to a starting cost of $100 - so that’s a big difference
(I’m suprised you even read the numbers!)