https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0514-3719
Summary
Bacterial growth is used as a simple example of exponential growth, but a population often grows much faster than the average time-to-division suggests. We examine the effect of randomness in the time-to-division of individual bacteria and the aggregate population growth, revealing intricacies that are often overlooked. Specifically, the average time-to-division of individual bacteria does not by itself determine the aggregate population growth. Exponential population growth occurs in realistic scenarios, but the aggregate growth factor depends in nonobvious ways on the underlying splitting distribution.
MSC:
Acknowledgment
The authors thank Will Rose for conversations that inspired this article. The authors also thank Dr. Gene Chase for his suggestions. Dr. Chase is the father of one of the authors and passed away from COVID-19 during the review process. This article is dedicated to his memory.
Notes
* Note that the online version of this paper has color diagrams. In particular, the online version uses color to distinguish among the different curves in Figures 2 and 3.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
John Chase
JOHN CHASE is a National Board certified teacher and is Chair of the math department at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, MD. He has spoken at the national NCTM conference, he has been a frequent guest presenter at the Museum of Mathematics in New York City, and he maintains a math education blog at mrchasemath.com. Outside of mathematics, he enjoys spending time with his wife and three daughters and pursuing hobbies such as juggling and magic.
Matthew Wright
Matthew Wright is an associate professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, where he teaches applied and computational math courses. His research is in topological data analysis and computational mathematics, and he is an author of the RIVET software for topological data analysis. Matthew lives in Minnesota with his wife and two children, and also enjoys juggling. Find him online at mlwright.org.