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Concave Growth Function

This is for my homies taking calculus.

Here’s a real-life example of a concave function. Around minute 35, they say that as an animal grows in size, each cell requires less energy – so its total energy consumption is concave as a function of size.

f(»×x) < »×f(x)

Yup, this is the complicated way to say it – on purpose. Listen to the podcast to hear it in terms of elephants and mice.

I think there is an even more complicated way to put it – maybe it’s called the “Euler characteristic” or something, essentially it’s that

f(» × x)   =   »^n × f(x)

so that different functions with a different value for n scale in different ways.

If you can put the symbols together with the real-life meaning, it will pay off in terms of insight. You can see something and think to yourself “hey, that’s convex!” And you can also imagine the phenomenon with a different value of n – i.e. different scaling properties.

(Source: radiolab.org)

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