In California's Gold Rush, some towns grew exponentially. If a certain town started with 45 people and had 360 people 15 months later, what is the growth rate?(growth rate can also be per month instead of per year)

Horizontal asymptote at  tells us that the original graph has been translated down.since  ,  are positive.  also we can say that the point  has a smaller  -coordinate than  .this means that the  transformed exponential function is increasing as it goes to the right. as it goes from  to , the value of the exponential function increases. it goes from to something bigger, . therefore, as  . the left hand would be the side that approaches the horizontal asymptote.so the answer is d