Numerical evolutions beyond our belief

Abstract

The everyday life situations gave us a good enough training to deal with numerical evolutions operated by arithmetic progressions, so in this specific case we can make good numerical predictions. But our common sense is not usually prepared to deal with numbers that grow, or shrink, according to geometrical progressions. In the last cases, our intuition strongly fails, showing that our intuition is not always right. We also fail in comparing some other situations which we are not trained. This article shows some of that limiting cases.

Keywords

• progressão aritmética
• progressão geométrica
• senso comum
• unidade astronômica
• ano-luz
• diâmetro da via láctea