4.1: Exponential Functions

India is the second most populous country in the world with a population of about \(1.25\) billion people in 2013. The population is growing at a rate of about \(.2\%\) each year. If this rate continues, the population of India will exceed China’s population by the year 2031. When populations grow rapidly, we often say that the growth is “exponential,” meaning that something is growing very rapidly. To a mathematician, however, the term exponential growth has a very specific meaning. In this section, we will take a look at exponential functions, which model this kind of rapid growth.

Identify Exponential Functions

When exploring linear growth, we observed a constant rate of change - a constant number by which the output increased for each unit increase in input (i.e. \(f(x+1) = f(x) \color < + c>\)). For example, in the linear equation \(f(x)=3x+4\), the difference in consecutive outputs, each time the input increases by \(1\), is always a constant, \(3\) (notice \(3\) is the slope of the line). The scenario in the India population example is different - it exhibits exponential growth. In this situation, the ratio between consecutive outputs, each time \(1\) year goes by, is always a constant (i.e. \(f(x+1) = f(x) \color < \times c>\) ). In other words, each year, the number of people increases by a fixed percentage of the population.

Exponential Functions

What exactly does it mean to grow exponentially? What does the word double have in common with percent increase? These words are often tossed around and appear frequently in the media.

For us to gain a clear understanding of exponential growth, let us contrast exponential growth with linear growth. We will construct two functions. Both start with an input of \(0\). The first function is exponential. Every time the input is increased by \(1\) we will double the corresponding consecutive output. Thus the ratio between consecutive outputs will always be \(2\). The second function is linear. Every time the input is increased by \(1\) we will add \(2\) to the corresponding consecutive outputs. Thus the difference between consecutive output will always be \(2\). (Table \(\PageIndex\)).

From Table \(\PageIndex\) we can infer that for these two functions, exponential growth dwarfs linear growth.

for the function f: (0, 1), (1, 2), (2, 4), (3, 8), (4, 16), (5, 32), and (6, 64).">Table \(\PageIndex>\)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 2 4 8 16 32 64
0 2 4 6 8 10 12

The next value, \(f(x+1)\) is 2 times more than the previous value \(f(x)\).
The next value, \(g(x+1)\) is an additional 2 more than the previous value \(g(x)\).

Clearly, the difference between “the same percentage” and “the same amount” is quite significant. For exponential growth, over equal increments, the constant multiplicative rate of change resulted in multiplying the output by \(2\) whenever the input increased by one. For linear growth, the constant additive rate of change over equal increments resulted in adding \(2\) to the output whenever the input was increased by one.

General form of the exponential function

The general form of the exponential function is \(f(x)=ab^x\), where \(a\) is any nonzero number, \(b\) is a positive real number not equal to \(1\).