Eli5, How was number e discovered?

Question

Eli5, How was number e discovered?

In: 3566

Answer 1

There’s many ways it was discovered. One way that comes to mind is how if you have n balls labelled 1,2,3,….n which correspond to boxes 1,2,3,…..n, then

The ratio of no of ways of arranging 1 in each box to no of ways of arranging one in each box such that none of them are in their corresponding box. Extend this to infinity and you get e.

Although fairly complicated it’s slightly intuitive.

There’s also the find a function whose derivative is the function itself and the Bernoulli compound interest story