Natural Number
The number pi, the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter, receives much attention. Perhaps an equally as important number, but not nearly as famous, is the number e, which was labelled by the great Swiss mathematician Euler*. You've probably only seen this fascinating number if you've studied highschool calculus like these two former maths students who made it big:
Google constantly leaves numerical puns and riddles for those who care to look in the right places. When it filed the regulatory documents for its stockmarket listing in 2004, it said that it planned to raise $2,718,281,828, which is $e billion to the nearest dollar.
What's so special about e? The number is commonly used when deriving equations to model and predict growth and decay in nature. Thus, one can predict the growth of, say, bacteria or the decay of nuclear matter quite accurately with this universal constant. The number also arises frquently in statistics and probability. Indeed, the equation for the famous normal (or bell) curve contains the number e (pi cunningly also sneaks into the equation to ensure the area under the curve is one).
The number e, like pi, is never ending though the digits can be calculated with a simple equation up to desired point. Interestingly, a mathematician once used the Law of Rare Events (found in probability) to calculate e to a decent degree of accuracy by counting the number of horse-related solider deaths in the Prussian War. Although he was off by 1%, it's still a good effort at calculating a universal constant by counting soldiers deaths from horse-kicks.
*While in Swizterland I noticed Euler has a youth hostel named after him in his home town of Basel. If I had stayed there, I would have been the coolest lad around. Well, at least the coolest maths student around...
Google constantly leaves numerical puns and riddles for those who care to look in the right places. When it filed the regulatory documents for its stockmarket listing in 2004, it said that it planned to raise $2,718,281,828, which is $e billion to the nearest dollar.
What's so special about e? The number is commonly used when deriving equations to model and predict growth and decay in nature. Thus, one can predict the growth of, say, bacteria or the decay of nuclear matter quite accurately with this universal constant. The number also arises frquently in statistics and probability. Indeed, the equation for the famous normal (or bell) curve contains the number e (pi cunningly also sneaks into the equation to ensure the area under the curve is one).
The number e, like pi, is never ending though the digits can be calculated with a simple equation up to desired point. Interestingly, a mathematician once used the Law of Rare Events (found in probability) to calculate e to a decent degree of accuracy by counting the number of horse-related solider deaths in the Prussian War. Although he was off by 1%, it's still a good effort at calculating a universal constant by counting soldiers deaths from horse-kicks.
*While in Swizterland I noticed Euler has a youth hostel named after him in his home town of Basel. If I had stayed there, I would have been the coolest lad around. Well, at least the coolest maths student around...
posted by Engels at 10:09 am
4 Comments:
by being the coolest maths lad around, dont you automatically qualify for coolest lad around as well?
like... i'm doing this maths degree thingo.. you arent telling me that isnt cool... are you?
*disclaimer: i am proving to be fucking pathetic at math. Its making me sad.
Well, yeah but nah.
It's OK, Dalai. Just think about all the women at the end...chicks dig maths.
Is it true that you tell the girls "check out the size of my equation!"
Then you offer to "prove it from first principles".
Haha. Oh. My. God. Terrible.
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