Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Scary numbers





Many thanks for my Lemonade award. But it has unwittingly plunged me into the scary world of exponential growth.

I know that I should do the decent thing and pass this award on, as instructed, to ten other people, but here's the problem: we are soon going to run out of people on the planet, never mind deserving bloggers, to satisfy this generous and well intentioned impulse.


I'm no mathematician, but I remember being told the story of the grain of rice on a chessboard when I was a child, and it gave me a headache, rather as the notion of infinity still does. Wikipedia tells the story here.

So I give you instead this restful picture of some moss growing on a brick wall and then
we should all have a nice cup of tea and a sit down to drive away the scary thoughts.

 

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