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What is Exponential Growth?

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The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens.
~ Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel, proposed Moore's Law in 1965
Exponential Growth is a growth rate that gets faster and faster with time. Anything that grows or improves at an exponential rate eventually achieves an extreme pace of growth and then heads off rapidly towards infinity.
Processes of exponential growth or improvement typically become bounded with time. That is to say, exponential growth tends to be temporary. It is harder to grow something big at an exponential rate due to limits to and inefficiencies that tend to strike large scale operations. Likewise, it is difficult to improve something at an exponential rate that is already highly optimized. Technical limits and Murphy's Law tend to get in the way eventually.
Overview: Exponential Growth
Type
Definition (1)
A growth rate or rate of improvement that gets faster and faster with time.
Definition (2)
A growth rate defined by an exponential function.
Examples
Successful companies may experience extremely high rates of growth when they are small but this typically tappers off as they become sufficiently large.
A population of bacteria can double in as little as 9.8 minutes. However, this exponential growth has a limit and bacteria enter a state known as a stationary phase when the growth rate declines and the population stabilizes. This is typically followed by a decline phase whereby a population experiences exponential decline.
Moore's Law is the observation that processor speeds have roughly doubled every 18 months since 1975. It is considered one of the most remarkable technical achievements in human history that spawned the information age. Considered the quintessential example of exponential improvement, it is widely believed that Moore's Law will slow as soon as 2025 due to technical and economic limits.
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