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Equation 4 · Part 3 · Seventy-Five Thousand Generations of E. coli, and Counting

Symbol a

wopen(t)=1+a tβw_{\text{open}}(t) = 1 + a\,t^{\beta}
aa

What this part means

a is one of the signed contributions combined to compute the quantity on the left.

Its job in the formula

a is one of the signed contributions combined to compute the quantity on the left.

The passage around this formula

which approaches a fixed value of 1 + a/b as t grows without bound, and wopen(t)=1+a tβw_{\text{open}}(t) = 1 + a\,t^{\beta}. for an exponent β\beta between 0 and 1, which keeps rising — more and more slowly, but without any asymptote — for every value of t . Wiser and colleagues derived the second form theoretically from a model combining clonal…

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A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.

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Sources cited in the surrounding passage

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