Best Answer
Growth matters because models of growth show how something increases in a particular setting. Anything with the capability of increasing can exhibit growth. Linear growth is growth that is constant. It grows the same amount for each unit of time. Exponential growth refers to growth that increases exponentially over a set period of time.
Exponential growth rapidly overtakes linear growth in terms of how quickly something increases. It can result in huge increases in the original number of items over a very short period of time. For example, people in animal rescue advocate spaying or neutering pets because the growth of the animal population is an exponential growth function. For example, with female cats having an average of 2.8 surviving kittens per litter and two litters per year, in 8 years a single unsprayed female cat can be the origin of over 2 million unwanted kittens.
Of course, the most relevant example of exponential growth in 2021 is probably the COVID-19 pandemic. Pandemics spread through exponential growth. Each person who gets sick with the COVID-19 virus has the ability to infect a large number of people. That has led to the rapid and worldwide spread of a novel virus.
Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has helped highlight how few people understand exponential growth. The initial reluctance of many governments to enact dramatic and immediate policies to help halt the spread of COVID-19 because of low initial numbers reveals that they simply did not understand exponential growth. One component of exponential growth is that it will initially show a relatively low spread. This lulls people into a false sense of complacency. However, after only a few periods of time, the increase becomes dramatic. One of the consequences is that resources and facilities can quickly become overwhelmed.
