Something I wasn’t taught in high school

I wasn’t taught in high school about “exponential growth.” When something is growing exponentially, it doesn’t grow much at first, but as time passes it gets much bigger and faster too.

One example is powers of two (2, 4, 8, 16…. 8 million, 16 million — etc.) But what you may not realize is that 3% growth per year is exponential too! Like this:

Here is the same chart (3%) zoomed out:

Population has been growing exponentially, but it’s complicated. The UN projects it may level off at 11.2 billion around 2100.