Exponential Dracula

Posted by jns on 30 October 2006

Herewith, from the popular press, an excellent example of geometric (exponential) growth and its implications:

WASHINGTON (AP) — It may be the season for vampires, ghosts and zombies. Just remember, they’re not real, warns physicist Costas Efthimiou.
[...]
Efthimiou takes out the calculator to prove that if a vampire sucked one person’s blood each month [only 1 meal a month!] — turning each victim into an equally hungry vampire [exponential growth!] — after a couple of years there would be no people left, just vampires. He started his calculations with just one vampire and 537 million humans on January 1, 1600 and shows that the human population would be down to zero by July 1602.

[Associated Press, "Count Dracula not in the numbers, physicist says",^* cnn.com, 27 October 2006.]
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^* Evidently the headline writer was tired; a more obvious choice: “Count Numbers, not Dracula”.