It's likely that you may have come across the story of the wheat and chessboard problem, where an ancient Indian Minister when asked for what he wanted as a reward for his great invention of the game of chess, requested his ruler (king) provide him with as much wheat amounted to if a chessboard were to have wheat placed upon each square of the 64 squares on the board such that one grain were placed on the first square, two on the second, four on the third and so on (doubling or squaring the number of grains on each subsequent square). The ruler laughs it off thinking that the inventor wanted such a small sum for such an amazing invention, only to have court treasurers report the unexpectedly huge number of wheat grains would outstrip the ruler's resources (and the entire world's, today, by an insane factor of 2,000 times total production).