All Irreal readers, I’m sure, are familiar with the power of compounding if only because they know about “compound interest.” Every now and then, Paul Graham (re)tweets an interesting mathematical fact. The last example I wrote about is the fact that any well-shuffled card deck is almost certainly unique in the history of the universe. Recently, he offered this fact about compounding:
A small improvement each day for a year can make a big difference
1.01³⁶⁵ ≈ 37.78#NewYearsResolution #MondayMotivation#HappyNewYear2020 pic.twitter.com/uRnjOF5bJD
— Tamás Görbe (@TamasGorbe) December 30, 2019
Much like the size of \(52!\), this doesn’t seem too surprising at first glance but consider: if you can improve some skill—a musical instrument, programming ability, typing speed, whatever—by just 1% a day, at the end of the year you will have improved 3,778%.