Quantifying microbial growth is of primary interest in microbiology and is routinely involved in a diversity of studies, such as comparing and/or contrasting strains and/or species, competition associated with co-infections, assessments of risks related to food contamination, testing drug efficacy, or the development of candidate vaccines [1–4]. The typical types of questions asked can be summarized as ‘does strain A grow faster than strain B?’ or ‘will species A reach larger population size than species B?’.