Have you heard this riddle?

I am going to give you some money. You can have one amount right now, or you can have another amount over the course of 30 days. The choices are $1,000,000 right now or starting today I give you $0.01 (Not Verizon math, that is a penny). Every day for 30 days, I will double that penny. Which would you rather have?

Which did you choose? Did you make the right choice? Sure one million dollars is a lot of money no matter how you slice it, but the second option can be expressed as an exponential function.

f(t) = A * ((2^t)-1)

t = time

A=original amount

If you were to choose the second option, it can be calculated by plugging the numbers in:

f(30) = .01 * ((2^30)-1)

f(30) = $10,737,418.23

I don't know about you, but I would choose the penny option. Choosing the penny option would net you over 10x the amount of money over the course of 30 days.

Yeah I know...I am a nerd.