As part of creating hundreds of statistical profiles for
cumorah.com over the past year or two, I have noticed certain mathematical functions occurring for membership growth trends in countries around the world. I am still trying to understand what this all means and whether certain mathematical functions occur with certain church growth conditions (i.e. high receptivity, national outreach expansion, mission resource allocation, ect). Although it may be difficult to determine what all these data mean, I do believe that examining past LDS growth trends can shed insight into forecasting and predicting future LDS growth trends.
So far I have categorized the membership growth trends of countries into six categories
- Linear
- Negative quadratic
- Positive quadratic
- Exponential
- Piecewise
- Disorganized
Here are some examples of what I have observed. I have included the equation for the best-fit line for the first four examples:
LINEAR
NEGATIVE QUADRATIC
POSITIVE QUADRATIC
EXPONENTIAL
PIECEWISE
(two examples)
DISORGANIZED
I am interested in your thoughts. What factors do you believe are responsible for these relatively predictable membership growth trends in these and other countries? Do certain contextual factors correlate with certain mathematical functions? I am surprised to see how predictable these growth trends are and how closely past membership data has followed best-fit lines for these various mathematical functions.
