tell them that 3 weeks ago (Februray ~25th) Italy only had 3 confirmed cases of Covid19, 3 weeks later (March 15th) Italy has more than 20,000 cases!! that's right TWENTY THOUSANDS!!
Geoffrey's cartoon example is unfair because the values are so far from reality. If bacteria were to double every second, after four hours there would be more than 10^4334 bacteria (it is estimated that the there are between 10^78 to 10^82 atoms in the known, observable universe).
The doubling rate for commonly used laboratory bacteria in a lab culture is once every 20 minutes. His example isn't "unfair", it's just an example. Any rate of doubling works fine as an example. He could have used a rate of every millisecond and the example would be fine. Or he could have used every 100 years.
@@pfaurs The point is that he emphasizes that the experiment began at 8 a.m. This fact defines a time scale, therefore a doubling time of one second is not the same as twenty minutes or 100 years. The surprising thing about his story is that after waiting almost four hours (defined time scale) the test tube fills the remaining 99% in the last few seconds. That would be the surprising or counterintuitive thing about exponential behavior, but it is only possible to that extent in a mathematical abstraction, not in the real case.
@@LucasUzal if u were strapped in a waterproof football stadium all the way at the top at noon, and a droplet of water doubles every second, at what time would you drown from the water? only 50 minutes later. its just an example.
Hello, I like your video very much, but I would like to share it with French friends who dont understand English. Would you be interested in uploading the French translation I will provide -- the automated translation has several problems -- or could I copy your video and provide the translation myself and refer to your video here? I already cleaned up the English automated translation. I am in Quebec, Canada, but the French would work for all French speakers. I am as interested as you to make this understood. The lastest exemple of this lack of understanding are officials waiting more than a month to do something about monkeypox where it was clearly growing exponentially, letting it expand to more than 50 countries with thousands of cases.
@@tuckerbugeater Yes, but the translation is not good at several places. There is a reason why translation firms still exist despite automated translation tools : the systems can't tell when they are way off. I have seen an automated translation of a Cisco router 'control plane' translated in French as a 'control airplane'. :)
Hi, I'm sorry I took this long to reply. I haven't checked the comments on here for years. Take this video and do whatever you like. Download it, change it, no problem. The message is more important.
This explains the exponential growth, but the part about a population problem isn't true. The situation with population is different because the number of borned children decrease with economic growth. That means that the population will increase, but only for some time, because every children born increases the economic situation. That is why in africa there is that big number of born babies (In africa is bad economic situation, so the families need more people for work.). And when the absolute poverty will disapper, the number of born babies will decrease and problem will resolve itself.
I'm starting to think people don't "get" exponentials and big numbers in the same way they don't "get" small numbers. If you told someone that entering a room meant there was a 0.1% chance they'd instantly catch fire and burn to death then everyone who isn't suicidal would stay the fuck away from that room. But when you tell someone Coronavirus has a ~0.3% IFR then they're like "lol it's harmless."
