The doubling time is a characteristic unit (a natural unit of scale) for the exponential growth equation, and its converse for exponential decay is the half-life. For example, given Canada's net population growth of 0.9% in the year 2006, dividing 70 by 0.9 gives an approximate doubling time of 78 years.
The doubling time is the period of time required for a quantity to double in size or value. It is applied to population growth, inflation, resource extraction, consumption of goods, compound interest, the volume malignant tumours, and many other things that tend to grow over time.
