Question

9. The population of a town is 2500 and is decreasing at a rate of 3.5% per year. Write an exponential function to find the population of the town after 5 years

Answer 1

The function that describes or represents this situation would be

`y=a\cdot(1+b)^x`

Where a is the initial population, b is the increasing or decreasing (in this case, would be a negative value) rate and x are the years. Replace each value on the function to find the population after 5 years.

`\begin{gathered} y=2500\cdot(1-0.035)^5 \\ y=2500\cdot0.8368 \\ y=2092 \end{gathered}`

The population of the town will be 2092 in 5 five years.