The number e is of great importance in mathematics,[6] alongside 0, 1,
π, and i. All five appear in one formulation of
Euler's identity and play important and recurring roles across mathematics.[7][8] Like the constant π, e is
irrational, meaning that it cannot be represented as a ratio of integers, and moreover it is
transcendental, meaning that it is not a root of any non-zero
polynomial with rational coefficients.[3] To 30 decimal places, the value of e is:[1]
2.718281828459045235360287471352
Definitions
The number e is the
limit
an expression that arises in the computation of
compound interest.
It is the unique positive number a such that the graph of the function y = ax has a
slope of 1 at x = 0.
One has where is the (natural)
exponential function, the unique function that equals its own
derivative and satisfies the equation Since the exponential function is commonly denoted as one has also
The
logarithm of base b can be defined as the
inverse function of the function Since one has The equation implies therefore that e is the base of the natural logarithm.
The number e can also be characterized in terms of an
integral:[9]
The first references to the constant were published in 1618 in the table of an appendix of a work on logarithms by
John Napier. However, this did not contain the constant itself, but simply a list of
logarithms to the base . It is assumed that the table was written by
William Oughtred. In 1661,
Christiaan Huygens studied how to compute logarithms by geometrical methods and calculated a quantity that, in retrospect, is the base-10 logarithm of e, but he did not recognize e itself as a quantity of interest.[5][10]
The constant itself was introduced by
Jacob Bernoulli in 1683, for solving the problem of
continuous compounding of interest.[11][12]
In his solution, the constant e occurs as the
limit
where n represents the number of intervals in a year on which the compound interest is evaluated (for example, for monthly compounding).
Leonhard Euler started to use the letter e for the constant in 1727 or 1728, in an unpublished paper on explosive forces in cannons,[14] and in a letter to
Christian Goldbach on 25 November 1731.[15][16] The first appearance of e in a printed publication was in Euler's Mechanica (1736).[17] It is unknown why Euler chose the letter e.[18] Although some researchers used the letter c in the subsequent years, the letter e was more common and eventually became standard.[2]
Euler proved that e is the sum of the
infinite series
where n! is the
factorial of n.[5] The equivalence of the two characterizations using the limit and the infinite series can be proved via the
binomial theorem.[19]
Applications
Compound interest
Jacob Bernoulli discovered this constant in 1683, while studying a question about
compound interest:[5]
An account starts with $1.00 and pays 100 percent interest per year. If the interest is credited once, at the end of the year, the value of the account at year-end will be $2.00. What happens if the interest is computed and credited more frequently during the year?
If the interest is credited twice in the year, the interest rate for each 6 months will be 50%, so the initial $1 is multiplied by 1.5 twice, yielding $1.00 × 1.52 = $2.25 at the end of the year. Compounding quarterly yields $1.00 × 1.254 = $2.44140625, and compounding monthly yields $1.00 × (1 + 1/12)12 = $2.613035.... If there are n compounding intervals, the interest for each interval will be 100%/n and the value at the end of the year will be $1.00 × (1 + 1/n)n.[20][21]
Bernoulli noticed that this sequence approaches a limit (the
force of interest) with larger n and, thus, smaller compounding intervals.[5] Compounding weekly (n = 52) yields $2.692596..., while compounding daily (n = 365) yields $2.714567... (approximately two cents more). The limit as n grows large is the number that came to be known as e. That is, with continuous compounding, the account value will reach $2.718281828... More generally, an account that starts at $1 and offers an annual interest rate of R will, after t years, yield eRt dollars with continuous compounding. Here, R is the decimal equivalent of the rate of interest expressed as a percentage, so for 5% interest, R = 5/100 = 0.05.[20][21]
Bernoulli trials
The number e itself also has applications in
probability theory, in a way that is not obviously related to exponential growth. Suppose that a gambler plays a slot machine that pays out with a probability of one in n and plays it n times. As n increases, the probability that gambler will lose all n bets approaches 1/e. For n = 20, this is already approximately 1/2.789509....
This is an example of a
Bernoulli trial process. Each time the gambler plays the slots, there is a one in n chance of winning. Playing n times is modeled by the
binomial distribution, which is closely related to the
binomial theorem and
Pascal's triangle. The probability of winning k times out of n trials is:[22]
In particular, the probability of winning zero times (k = 0) is
The limit of the above expression, as n tends to infinity, is precisely 1/e.
Exponential growth is a process that increases quantity over time at an ever-increasing rate. It occurs when the instantaneous
rate of change (that is, the
derivative) of a quantity with respect to time is
proportional to the quantity itself.[21] Described as a function, a quantity undergoing exponential growth is an
exponential function of time, that is, the variable representing time is the exponent (in contrast to other types of growth, such as
quadratic growth). If the constant of proportionality is negative, then the quantity decreases over time, and is said to be undergoing
exponential decay instead. The law of exponential growth can be written in different but mathematically equivalent forms, by using a different
base, for which the number e is a common and convenient choice:
Here, denotes the initial value of the quantity x, k is the growth constant, and is the time it takes the quantity to grow by a factor of e.
The normal distribution with zero mean and unit standard deviation is known as the standard normal distribution,[23] given by the
probability density function
The constraint of unit standard deviation (and thus also unit variance) results in the 1/2 in the exponent, and the constraint of unit total area under the curve results in the factor . This function is symmetric around x = 0, where it attains its maximum value , and has
inflection points at x = ±1.
Another application of e, also discovered in part by Jacob Bernoulli along with
Pierre Remond de Montmort, is in the problem of
derangements, also known as the hat check problem:[24]n guests are invited to a party and, at the door, the guests all check their hats with the butler, who in turn places the hats into n boxes, each labelled with the name of one guest. But the butler has not asked the identities of the guests, and so puts the hats into boxes selected at random. The problem of de Montmort is to find the probability that none of the hats gets put into the right box. This probability, denoted by , is:
As n tends to infinity, pn approaches 1/e. Furthermore, the number of ways the hats can be placed into the boxes so that none of the hats are in the right box is n!/e,rounded to the nearest integer, for every positive n.[25]
Optimal planning problems
The maximum value of occurs at . Equivalently, for any value of the base b > 1, it is the case that the maximum value of occurs at (
Steiner's problem, discussed
below).
This is useful in the problem of a stick of length L that is broken into n equal parts. The value of n that maximizes the product of the lengths is then either[26]
or
The quantity is also a measure of
information gleaned from an event occurring with probability (approximately when ), so that essentially the same optimal division appears in optimal planning problems like the
secretary problem.
The parenthesized limit on the right is independent of the variable x. Its value turns out to be the logarithm of a to base e. Thus, when the value of a is set to e, this limit is equal to 1, and so one arrives at the following simple identity:
Consequently, the exponential function with base e is particularly suited to doing calculus. Choosing e (as opposed to some other number) as the base of the exponential function makes calculations involving the derivatives much simpler.
Another motivation comes from considering the derivative of the base-a logarithm (i.e., logax),[28] for x > 0:
where the substitution u = h/x was made. The base-a logarithm of e is 1, if a equals e. So symbolically,
The logarithm with this special base is called the
natural logarithm, and is usually denoted as ln; it behaves well under differentiation since there is no undetermined limit to carry through the calculations.
Thus, there are two ways of selecting such special numbers a. One way is to set the derivative of the exponential function ax equal to ax, and solve for a. The other way is to set the derivative of the base a logarithm to 1/x and solve for a. In each case, one arrives at a convenient choice of base for doing calculus. It turns out that these two solutions for a are actually the same: the number e.
The
Taylor series for the exponential function can be deduced from the facts that the exponential function is its own derivative and that it equals 1 when evaluated at 0:[29]
Setting recovers the definition of e as the sum of an infinite series.
The natural logarithm function can be defined as the integral from 1 to of , and the exponential function can then be defined as the inverse function of the natural logarithm. The number e is the value of the exponential function evaluated at , or equivalently, the number whose natural logarithm is 1. It follows that e is the unique positive real number such that
Because ex is the unique function (
up to multiplication by a constant K) that is equal to its own
derivative,
where K is any real or complex number, is the full solution to the
differential equation
Inequalities
The number e is the unique real number such that
for all positive x.[31]
Also, we have the inequality
for all real x, with equality if and only if x = 0. Furthermore, e is the unique base of the exponential for which the inequality ax ≥ x + 1 holds for all x.[32] This is a limiting case of
Bernoulli's inequality.
Furthermore, by the
Lindemann–Weierstrass theorem, e is
transcendental, meaning that it is not a solution of any non-zero polynomial equation with rational coefficients. It was the first number to be proved transcendental without having been specifically constructed for this purpose (compare with
Liouville number); the proof was given by
Charles Hermite in 1873.[39] The number e is one of only a few transcendental numbers for which the exact
irrationality exponent is known (given by ).[40]
It is conjectured that e is
normal, meaning that when e is expressed in any
base the possible digits in that base are uniformly distributed (occur with equal probability in any sequence of given length).[43]
Because this series is
convergent for every
complex value of x, it is commonly used to extend the definition of ex to the complex numbers.[46] This, with the Taylor series for
sin and cos x, allows one to derive
Euler's formula:
which holds for every complex x.[46] The special case with x =
π is
Euler's identity:
which is considered to be an exemplar of
mathematical beauty as it shows a profound connection between the most fundamental numbers in mathematics. In addition, it is directly used in
a proof that π is
transcendental, which implies the impossibility of
squaring the circle.[47][48] Moreover, the identity implies that, in the
principal branch of the logarithm,[46]
The following infinite product evaluates to e:[26]
Many other series, sequence, continued fraction, and infinite product representations of e have been proved.
Stochastic representations
In addition to exact analytical expressions for representation of e, there are stochastic techniques for estimating e. One such approach begins with an infinite sequence of independent random variables X1, X2..., drawn from the
uniform distribution on [0, 1]. Let V be the least number n such that the sum of the first n observations exceeds 1:
The number of known digits of e has increased substantially since the introduction of the computer, due both to increasing performance of computers and to algorithmic improvements.[54][55]
Since around 2010, the proliferation of modern high-speed
desktop computers has made it feasible for amateurs to compute trillions of digits of e within acceptable amounts of time. On Dec 5, 2020, a record-setting calculation was made, giving e to 31,415,926,535,897 (approximately π×1013) digits.[63]
Computing the digits
One way to compute the digits of e is with the series[64]
A faster method involves two recursive functions and . The functions are defined as
The expression produces the nth partial sum of the series above. This method uses
binary splitting to compute e with fewer single-digit arithmetic operations and thus reduced
bit complexity. Combining this with
fast Fourier transform-based methods of multiplying integers makes computing the digits very fast.[64]
In computer culture
During the emergence of
internet culture, individuals and organizations sometimes paid homage to the number e.
In an early example, the
computer scientistDonald Knuth let the version numbers of his program
Metafont approach e. The versions are 2, 2.7, 2.71, 2.718, and so forth.[65]
In another instance, the
IPO filing for
Google in 2004, rather than a typical round-number amount of money, the company announced its intention to raise 2,718,281,828
USD, which is e billion
dollars rounded to the nearest dollar.[66]
Google was also responsible for a billboard[67]
that appeared in the heart of
Silicon Valley, and later in
Cambridge, Massachusetts;
Seattle, Washington; and
Austin, Texas. It read "{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e}.com". The first 10-digit prime in e is 7427466391, which starts at the 99th digit.[68] Solving this problem and visiting the advertised (now defunct) website led to an even more difficult problem to solve, which consisted in finding the fifth term in the sequence 7182818284, 8182845904, 8747135266, 7427466391. It turned out that the sequence consisted of 10-digit numbers found in consecutive digits of e whose digits summed to 49. The fifth term in the sequence is 5966290435, which starts at the 127th digit.[69]
Solving this second problem finally led to a
Google Labs webpage where the visitor was invited to submit a résumé.[70]
The last release of the official
Python 2 interpreter has version number 2.7.18, a reference to e.[71]
^
abJacob Bernoulli considered the problem of continuous compounding of interest, which led to a series expression for e. See: Jacob Bernoulli (1690) "Quæstiones nonnullæ de usuris, cum solutione problematis de sorte alearum, propositi in Ephem. Gall. A. 1685" (Some questions about interest, with a solution of a problem about games of chance, proposed in the Journal des Savants (Ephemerides Eruditorum Gallicanæ), in the year (anno) 1685.**), Acta eruditorum, pp. 219–23.
On page 222, Bernoulli poses the question: "Alterius naturæ hoc Problema est: Quæritur, si creditor aliquis pecuniæ summam fænori exponat, ea lege, ut singulis momentis pars proportionalis usuræ annuæ sorti annumeretur; quantum ipsi finito anno debeatur?" (This is a problem of another kind: The question is, if some lender were to invest [a] sum of money [at] interest, let it accumulate, so that [at] every moment [it] were to receive [a] proportional part of [its] annual interest; how much would be owing [at the] end of [the] year?) Bernoulli constructs a power series to calculate the answer, and then writes: " … quæ nostra serie [mathematical expression for a geometric series] &c. major est. … si a = b, debebitur plu quam 2½a & minus quam 3a." ( … which our series [a geometric series] is larger [than]. … if a=b, [the lender] will be owed more than 2½a and less than 3a.) If a = b, the geometric series reduces to the series for a × e, so 2.5 < e < 3. (** The reference is to a problem which Jacob Bernoulli posed and which appears in the Journal des Sçavans of 1685 at the bottom of
page 314.)
^Lettre XV. Euler à Goldbach, dated November 25, 1731 in: P.H. Fuss, ed., Correspondance Mathématique et Physique de Quelques Célèbres Géomètres du XVIIIeme Siècle … (Mathematical and physical correspondence of some famous geometers of the 18th century), vol. 1, (St. Petersburg, Russia: 1843), pp. 56–60, see especially
p. 58. From p. 58: " … ( e denotat hic numerum, cujus logarithmus hyperbolicus est = 1), … " ( … (e denotes that number whose hyperbolic [i.e., natural] logarithm is equal to 1) … )
^Leonhard Euler, Mechanica, sive Motus scientia analytice exposita (St. Petersburg (Petropoli), Russia: Academy of Sciences, 1736), vol. 1, Chapter 2, Corollary 11, paragraph 171, p. 68.
From page 68:Erit enim seu ubi e denotat numerum, cuius logarithmus hyperbolicus est 1. (So it [i.e., c, the speed] will be or , where e denotes the number whose hyperbolic [i.e., natural] logarithm is 1.)
^Calinger, Ronald (2016). Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment. Princeton University Press.
ISBN978-0-691-11927-4. p. 124.
^Euler, L. "De serie Lambertina Plurimisque eius insignibus proprietatibus." Acta Acad. Scient. Petropol. 2, 29–51, 1783. Reprinted in Euler, L. Opera Omnia, Series Prima, Vol. 6: Commentationes Algebraicae. Leipzig, Germany: Teubner, pp. 350–369, 1921. (
facsimile)
^
abSultan, Alan; Artzt, Alice F. (2010). The Mathematics That Every Secondary School Math Teacher Needs to Know. Routledge. pp. 326–328.
ISBN978-0-203-85753-3.
^Hofstadter, D.R. (1995). Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. Basic Books.
ISBN0-7139-9155-0.
^Roger Cotes (1714) "Logometria," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 29 (338) : 5–45;
see especially the bottom of page 10. From page 10: "Porro eadem ratio est inter 2,718281828459 &c et 1, … " (Furthermore, by the same means, the ratio is between 2.718281828459… and 1, … )
^Leonhard Euler, Introductio in Analysin Infinitorum (Lausanne, Switzerland: Marc Michel Bousquet & Co., 1748), volume 1,
page 90.
^William Shanks, Contributions to Mathematics, ... (London, England: G. Bell, 1853),
page 89.