Problem of the Day
Wednesday, June 3, 2026
Problem:
A computer model of cell growth over time is developed, with the data produced by the model given here.
| Time (days) | Cell population count |
| 0 | 1 |
| 1 | 2 |
| 2 | 4 |
| 3 | 8 |
| 4 | 16 |
| 5 | 32 |
| 6 | 64 |
| 7 | 128 |
This model demonstrates what kind of function?
- linear increase
- linear decrease
- quadratic increase
- exponential increase
- exponential decay
The correct answer is d. The increase in the population is going up as a function of the power of time, which corresponds to an exponential increase.
If this were an algorithm and we were looking at performance time as a function of input size, the algorithm would have a Big-O performance of O(2n).