If you make an improvement of 1% over 365 days you get:
>>> 1.01**365
37.78343433288728
If you take that improvement to be 0.01% instead over 365 days, you get:
>>> 1.0001**365
1.0371724113025478
I wanted to calculate what happens if you make 0.01% improvement every second, which is taking the same calculation and spanning it over the number of seconds in a year. I found it to be difficult.
>>> 1.0001**(365*24*60*60*60)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
OverflowError: (34, 'Result too large')
I figured Google could help me. But it gave me the answer I didn’t expect. But it makes sense.
![](https://i1.wp.com/howtospeakmachine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-23-at-10.54.25-AM.png?fit=640%2C346&ssl=1)
Let’s proceed incrementally then. By day:
>>> 1.0001**(365*24)
2.401170202551435
By hour:
>>> 1.0001**(365*24*60)
6.689239090375805e+22
Wow! It’s already gigantic!
By minute:
>>> 1.0001**(365*24*60*60)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
OverflowError: (34, 'Result too large')
Okay, let’s see how Google does with it.
![](https://i1.wp.com/howtospeakmachine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-23-at-11.01.07-AM.png?fit=640%2C357&ssl=1)
![](https://howtospeakmachine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-23-at-11.01.51-AM.png)
Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere thanks to Wolfram.
![](https://i0.wp.com/howtospeakmachine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-23-at-11.03.02-AM.png?fit=640%2C314&ssl=1)
Wow. I’m a total Wolfram fan for sure.
![](https://i2.wp.com/howtospeakmachine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-23-at-11.04.27-AM.png?fit=640%2C323&ssl=1)