Why is the number e so important in mathematics?

Question

I've heard a lot about this number e. Why is it so important? How does it fit into the 'bigger picture' of mathematics? How is it calculated and used?

Answer 1

The number $e$ is not very important in mathematics!

On the contrary it's the exponential function $$\exp(x)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty\frac{x^n}{n!}$$ that's important. The number $e$ is just $\exp(1)$ - just one value of the exponential function. Compare how often one sees the exponential function as opposed to $e$ by itself. In the four previous answers to this question, three focus on the exponential function, and only one on $e$ itself.

Answer 2

One could easily write entire textbooks about this subject, and I think the only way to properly appreciate the answer is just to learn a lot of mathematics. But I will mention one perspective which suggests that $e$ ought to be fundamental to mathematics.

This is the perspective of groupoid cardinality. The definition of a groupoid is slightly technical, but for the purposes of this discussion a groupoid is a collection of groups. In many counting problems involving groups it turns out to be natural not to count all of the objects involved, but to divide each object by the number of symmetries it has. For example, if you draw five dots in a line on a paper and then fold the paper in half through the middle dot, two pairs of the dots have been identified and one dot has one half identified with the other half; in other words, the folding symmetry has cut the middle dot in half, so one might say that we now have $\frac{5}{2} = 2 + \frac{1}{2}$ dots.

This is the basic idea behind groupoid cardinality: the cardinality of a groupoid is the sum $\sum_x \frac{1}{|\text{Aut}(x)|}$, where the sum runs over all the isomorphism classes of objects of the groupoid (here, over all the groups in the collection, where $|\text{Aut}(x)|$ is the size of the corresponding group). All groups here are finite.

Now here is the fundamental statement.

The groupoid cardinality of the groupoid of finite sets (e.g. the collection of symmetric groups $S_1, S_2, ...$) is $e = \sum_{n \ge 0} \frac{1}{n!}$.

In other words, $e$ somehow embodies a fundamental property of finite sets. It is possible to think about the whole theory of exponential generating functions in this way, in particular to think about $e^x$ and its derivative property this way. Part of this story is described, I believe, in John Baez's the Tale of Groupoidification.

One of the more concrete ways to think about the relationship between the symmetric groups and $e$ is via this generating function. The identity described in that blog post, which sometimes goes by the name of the "exponential formula," explains, among many many other things, why the probability that a permutation of a large set has no fixed points is about $\frac{1}{e}$.

Answer 3

One of the first exposures students have to $e$ is in the formula for simple interest compounded continuously: $$A = Pe^{rt}$$

This formula can be easily derived from the formula for simple interest compounded discretely: $$A = P(1 + \frac{r}{n})^{nt}$$

The derivation depends on the identity $$e = \lim_{x \to \infty} (1 + \frac{1}{x})^x$$

So although this may not be the most important application, it is one way in which $e$ is used and calculated.

Answer 4

Quite simply, because of the identity

$$\frac{d}{dx} (e^x) = e^x$$

This is in fact the primary way of defining the constant e.

The consequences of this simple fact within mathematics are myriad, and can only really be properly appreciated by studying enough calculus and other related fields.

Answer 5

There's a very good lecture The Exponential Function by Gilbert Strang in MIT open Courseware and a related article Introducing $e^x$. And the whole lecture series Highlights of Calculus is really good!

Answer 6

The ubiquity of $e$ stems from the ubiquity of $e^x$. And $e^x$ is ubiquitous due to the fact that it permits one to solve any higher-order LDE with constant coefficients - either by factoring its differential operator over $\mathbb C$ into linear factors, or by converting it into linear system form and using matrix exponentials. See the exposition by Arnold below, from his beautiful textbook "Ordinary differential equations". As Arnold says "the exponential ... gives the solution of all differential equations quite generally"

Answer 7

The first thing to note is that e^x is defined by the well known infinite series. But that's not actually the crucially important thing from my point of view.

The real significance comes from the exponential mapping in the the theory of continuous symmetries (Lie Groups). The exponential mapping is a function from the "infinitesimal" elements of the group (Lie Algebra) to the elements of the group itself. This is not so easy to explain unfortunately, but you may be interested to wiki the principle axis theorem for some analogies from physics that are easy to visualize intuitively (the principle axis are the lie algebra). Clearly, the theory of continuous symmetries is of fundamental significance, and the appearance of the infinite series for e at the heart of this theory is for me quite profound.

Furthermore, for very general Lie Groups, we have the amazing identity

A = e^t₁L₁e^t₂L₂...e^t_NL_N

For an element of the Lie Group A with a lie algebra L_i of size N, and some real numbers t_i

We see the connection to the real number defined by e by representing a continuous group as a group of matrices (under matrix multiplication), and noticing that the exponential mapping is the infinite series for e^X, where X is now a matrix.

Answer 8

Read this very, very good and accessible book!
http://books.google.com/books?id=eIsyLD_bDKkC&printsec=frontcover