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Show someone an animation of the lily pads doubling every day and ask the same question and you’ll realise that they understand exponential growth intuitively,

• chongli 7y ago
  Show someone an animation of the lily pads doubling every day and ask them when the pond is half-covered? You're not even asking them to solve a problem at that point, only to point at the animation when it looks half-covered. Relating this to the spread of the virus, people aren't carrying around an animation of this in their minds. Perhaps science communicators should do a better job of communication and produce such an animation? But then you're still not getting people to understand the concept. You're telling them "this is what it looks like, sort of, now just trust us." The problem is that people don't trust scientists (and mathematicians) as it is.