Eli5: what is “E”? I find it used in numbers that are mind bogglingly large, but I don’t know what it really means.
In: Mathematics
I assume you mean E as used in scientific notation?
It’s shorthand. 5E+6 or 5E6 (lower case e also works) basically just means 5×10^6.
Which means “takes 10 and multiple it by itself 6 times then multiply that by 5” that 6 is basically telling you number of zeros you will have.
So that’s 5,000,000.
5×10^4 would be 50,000
As you mentioned that’s really helpful for really really big numbers. Like I can write 6×10^100 really easily, but it would take me awhile to type that out, and even longer to read it. (and I would probably screw up both of those)
As for…why we do that with “E” I’m not really sure, I’ve always assumed it was a limit with old screens that could display “5E+6” but maybe not display “2×10^6”
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