Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-topics-in-applied-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2007/a/1/i/solution

The iteration of a map is . For every , , so and . A cobweb alternates vertical steps to the graph and horizontal steps to the diagonal, approaching the origin monotonically.
Figure 1.
Resource-limited population cobweb: every positive orbit approaches extinction
. Details.
More precisely . The product has a finite strictly positive limit because . Thus for a positive constant depending on the initial biological population.

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