Back in the 80s, there was a commercial for Faberge Organic Shampoo. And even if the shampoo doesn’t sound familiar, you might have heard of the ad (“…and they tell two friends…”)
Hey, it’s exponential functions! 1 friend tells 2 friends, those 2 friends tell 4 friends, those 4 friends tell 9 friends, those…wait, 9? Where did that come from? And then those 9(?) friends tell 16 people. So it almost works, except that after the photo of 2 people they decided to switch to perfect squares.
Fortunately, a later ad brings the whole thing to a halt before reaching 9:
Good job Faberge people – you skipped the 9! Of course, this one went straight from 1, 2, 4 to 16 before diving headlong into a grid of 24 people, so I’m not sure it was much of a mathematical improvement.
Threesixty360…your source for commenting on 30 year old math mistakes that have already been well documented.
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