Exponential growth and decay: Index

I’m doing something that I should have done a long time ago: collect past series of posts into a single, easy-to-reference post. The following posts formed my recently completed series on various applications of exponential growth and decay.

Part 1: Introduction: continuous compound interest and the phrasing of homework questions

Paying off credit-card debt

Part 2: Solution using a differential equation.

Part 3: Teaching basic principles of financial literacy.

Part 4: More on financial literacy.

Part 5: Solution using a difference equation.

Part 6: Comparison of the two solutions (difference equation vs. differential equation).

Part 7: An alternative solution of the difference equation that can be derived by Precalculus students.

Part 8: Verifying the solution of the difference equation using a spreadsheet.

Part 9: Amortization tables.

Half-life

Part 10: Derivation of the formula for exponential decay using a differential equation.

Part 11: Rewriting the solution of the differential equation into the half-life formula.

Newton’s Law of Cooling

Part 12: Derivation of the formula using a differential equation.

Part 13: Classroom demonstrations of Newton’s Law of Cooling.

Logistic Growth Model

Part 14: A simple classroom demonstration of the logistic growth model.

Part 15: The governing differential equation for the logistic growth model.

Part 16: Tips on graphing the logistic growth function.