Question

If your employer asked you to select one of these options:

a) Your salary for the next two months will be $5,000,

b) 1 penny for the first day and then he will double your salary every day for the entire month, which one should you pick?

How much will you have at the end of 30 days?

Answer 1

Your salary on day n will be:
2^(n-1) pennies.
See how many pennies you earn just on day 30. Convert that to dollars. Make your decision.

Answer 2

And you owe me royalties on that crap. So don't hold out on me.

Answer 3

I don't really get your first answer

Answer 4

2^(n-1) does this:
n 2^(n-1)
1 1
2 2
3 4
4 8
5 16
6 32
and so on
every day, it doubles. But the cool thing about that function is that I can plug in for any specific day n and solve without having to do every day in between. So use it to find out how much you make on the last day, day 30.

Answer 5

536 870 912 right?

Answer 6

yeah dude. Is that a lot of pennies or what? How many dollars is that?

Answer 7

5368709.12 dollars