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The coronavirus outbreak offered the public a crash course in statistics, with terms like doubling time, logarithmic scales, R factor, rolling averages, and excess mortality now on everyone s tongue. However, simply having heard these terms does not mean that someone will be able to comprehend the speed of the spread.
Exponential growth is a notoriously difficult concept to understand. This difficulty can be illustrated by an old Indian legend about a king who was tricked by one of his advisers, saying Noble lord, I want nothing more than a chess board to be filled with grains of rice. Place one grain on the first square and double the amount of grain for each square that follows.