- #1
shoryuken
- 3
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I hope all of this makes sense. e, the eularian constant, has always bothered me. It comes up all the time but I never have a feel for what it is doing there.
The way I look at pi is that it occurs to relate a straight and (as far as we can measure) "round" distance. The definition of pi that makes perfect sense to me is that it is the ratio of an infinity-gon's diagonal to its perimeter. If you know how many points you are dealing with you can use the exact "pi" to the proper accuracy. Pi for a square is 2*sqrt2 because that's the perimeter when the diagonal is a unit (don't get me started on sqrt2). A 5000-gon's perimieter is probably something like 3.1416. I can see how pi starts and evolves. When I see pi in a function I know its purpose. Or maybe I'm just nuts and/or wrong. But I can't see any of this with e and would like to be able to. What grows e-ishly? Why is it that variables are exponents of e all the time? Is ln a better way of looking at e-ing? Do any of those questions even make any sense?
I hope all that wasn't too kooky and would really appreciate some help. Thanks.
The way I look at pi is that it occurs to relate a straight and (as far as we can measure) "round" distance. The definition of pi that makes perfect sense to me is that it is the ratio of an infinity-gon's diagonal to its perimeter. If you know how many points you are dealing with you can use the exact "pi" to the proper accuracy. Pi for a square is 2*sqrt2 because that's the perimeter when the diagonal is a unit (don't get me started on sqrt2). A 5000-gon's perimieter is probably something like 3.1416. I can see how pi starts and evolves. When I see pi in a function I know its purpose. Or maybe I'm just nuts and/or wrong. But I can't see any of this with e and would like to be able to. What grows e-ishly? Why is it that variables are exponents of e all the time? Is ln a better way of looking at e-ing? Do any of those questions even make any sense?
I hope all that wasn't too kooky and would really appreciate some help. Thanks.