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I like the way a teacher explained it in grade school. She said to imagine we had a choice between two deals. One option is that someone would give us $100 each
by adrianmonk 7y ago
I like the way a teacher explained it in grade school. She said to imagine we had a choice between two deals. One option is that someone would give us $100 each day for a month. The other is to receive 1 cent the first day, 2 cents the second day, 4 cents on the third day, doubling each day until a month has passed.
Of course we all chose $100/day. Then she told us it was too bad we didn't take the other option, because we would have been multi-billionaires.
- tomp 7y agoKeep in mind that your teacher is wrong (or you remember incorrectly). Given that a month has at most 31 days, 0.01 * 2 ^ 30 = 10 737 418.24 (if you sum up all the payments, double that - $20m), so quite far away from "multi-billionaires". The general principle stands though.
- adrianmonk 7y agoOh right, of course I forgot to divide by 100. I should have also remembered what my other teacher said: always check your units.
- jbverschoor 7y ago21m. Not billion yet
- twistedpairs 7y agoUsing max possible days in month gives ~21 million js: [...Array(31).keys()] .map(num => Math.pow(2,num)) .reduce((total,num) => total + num) / 100 $21,474,836.47 or since the sum is equal to the next sequential (2 to power of n+1) minus 1 cent => 2^31 - 1 = $21,474,836.47
- fsckboy 7y agoinstead of pennies, she probably said $1 the first day, $2 the second, ... and then you would still have chosen the $100 a day, and not become billionaires.