bored

[imthefoolonthehill]

I'm bored, and all my ideas to relieve my boredom involve fire....


does anyone know how they found the number e?

who discovered it, and how did they calculate it?

[amuse]

don't know, but here's fun stuff re: googolplex (http://www.fpx.de/fp/Fun/Googolplex/)

[imthefoolonthehill]

for anyone who cares... someone just told me that e the limit of the series (1 + (1/n) ) ^n

[ihaveaheadache]

ln e = 1
ln 1 = 0

[imthefoolonthehill]

yes, by definition... but log base ten of ten = o... that doesn't bloody well tell me what e is, does it?

[papayahed]

e: The true Hollywood Story:

http://www.mathcentre.ac.uk/resources/leaflets/firstaidkits/3_4.pdf#search='exponential%20constant'

[Jester]

wow... boredom shows its ugly head!

[ihaveaheadache]

e is a number such that the slope of the tangent line to y = e^x is exactly 1.
e lies between 2 and 3
e = 2.71828

The notation was chosen by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1727, probably because it is the first letter of the word "exponential."

[imthefoolonthehill]

hey, yeah that makes sense because dy/dx of e^x = e^x

... i guess i knew that, but indirectly.......