All group activities must include a statement signed by all members of your group that each group member fully participated in the activity. To start you should open a new Word document entitled something like "Group Activity 12" and put the names of your group members at the top. Save it to the desktop and save frequently during the hour.

Learning Goals for this Activity

1. You will continue to develop your Excel skills of creating tables and making graphs.
2. You will understand some of the characteristics of exponential growth, especially its eventual rapid growth.

1. Suppose a magic genie gives you a choice. He will give you $1000 each day in the month of March or he will give you 1¢ on the March 1st, 2¢ on March 2nd, 4¢ on March 3rd, doubling the amount each day.

a. Without thinking about it too hard, which would you pick?

b. Open the file genie.xls.  Extend the table for all 31 days. Paste it into your Word document.

Day	Amount given on each day under option 1	Total for option 1 on each day	Amount given on each day under option 2	Total for option 2 on each day
1	$1000	$1000	$0.01	$0.01
2	$1000	$2000	$0.02	$0.03
3	$1000	$3000	$0.04	$0.07

c. What does the table show? Would you change your mind about the which deal to pick?

d. At what point in your table is the amount in the fifth column in your table larger that the amount in the third column?

e. Plot the two total columns under each option on the same chart as separate series (To do so you need to select the data in columns A,C, and E; use an xy scatter plot).   You won't be able to graph for option 1.  In order to see it better, you may want to adjust the scale of the y-axis.  Right click on the y-axis.  One of the options is Scale.  You can set the minimum and the maximum there.  A maximum of about 100,000 gives a nice view.   In a brief paragraph describe the salient features of the graph.

2. Determine if each of the following tables represents a relationship that is linear, exponential or neither. For your convenience, these tables can be found the in Excel file LinearExponentialOrNeither.xls. Each table is on a separate sheet within this file; click on the worksheet tabs on the bottom of the window to display each one in turn.

a.

b.

c.

d.

3.  The population of the Russia in 1998 was 147 million; the population of Nigeria was 106 million.  Russia is decreasing in population by approximately 0.1% annually; the population of Nigeria is growing at 3%.  Using Excel or a calculator, predict the year when Nigeria's population will exceed Russia's, assuming that the current trend continues.  How much faith do you have in your answer? What factors could affect the validity of your prediction?