Heard the term in a tv programme, looked it up on Wikipedia to see what it was and the Wiki description did not enlighten me at all.
Dumb it down for me?
In: 2
If you’re ever looking for mathematical insight, don’t go to Wikipedia. It’s a battleground between the most pedantic math professionals looking to flex their understanding of jargon.
But as for the actual question, Napier’s constant is another name for Euler’s constant e. It’s a number, kind of like pi. It represents ~2.718…
It’s special because it is sort of the base unit of growth.
That is to say, if you’re describing something that grows exponentially, the simplest way to describe it is by using this number.
As a comparison let’s take pi, it’s like trying to talk about the area of a circle without using pi. You can do it, but it’s way easier to just use pi.
In the same way, describing the way things some things grow needs e.
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