Losing a fixed percentage each period produces exponential decay.

Evidence

If the rent payments suddenly cease, the rent is taken out of what remains stored. The units remaining will decline by 1% each day. Regularly losing a fixed percentage of what remains is the recipe for exponential decay. Usually, this decay is represented in terms of the number e = 2.71828182845904523536… . Since e−1/100 = 0.99 almost exactly, and e-1/100 × e-1/100 = e-2/100 and so on, you can easily convince yourself of the truth of the exponential decay formula: where N(0) is the amount stored initially, and t is measured in days in our 1% per day example. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 946

Categorization

• SHARE: The rent-as-decay framing that lands e=2.718 precisely at 0.99 daily is a nice tutor-friendly nugget for anyone teaching exponential decay.
• XREF: connects to: Card playing may collapse faster than a linear trend predicts — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 340; Rates of population growth and ecological transformation are themselves exponential. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 81