What is e (2.718…) and why does it literally appear everywhere?
In: 756
To explain it precisely would require quite a bit of maths but basically it’s ‘the solution’ you get when modelling a system where the rate of growth is proportional to the size of the population. ie if the population doubles, the rate at which it grows doubles.
Not that surprisingly this comes up a lot in nature – if each individual (or pair of individuals) is reproducing, that’s the same kind of growth we were talking about.
The most abstract concept is this – you have a group of something (animals, bacteria, money in a bank account whatever) and that thing is creating more of itself (having babies, dividing, gaining interest)
What’s important is that the result of this growth adds on to the original group and helps with the next stage of growth.
Latest Answers