# Writing About E (Not By Me)

It’s tricky to write about $e$. That is, it’s not a difficult thing to write about, but it’s hard to find the audience for this number. It’s quite important, mathematically, but it hasn’t got an easy-to-understand definition like pi’s “the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter”. E’s most concise definition, I guess, is “the base of the natural logarithm”, which as an explanation to someone who hasn’t done much mathematics is only marginally more enlightening than slapping him with a slice of cold pizza. And it hasn’t got the sort of renown of something like the golden ratio which makes the number sound familiar and even welcoming.

Still, the Mean Green Math blog (“Explaining the whys of mathematics”) has been running a series of essays explaining $e$, by looking at different definitions of the number. The most recent of this has been the twelfth in the series, and they seem to be arranged in chronological order under the category of Algebra II topics, and under the tag of “E” essays, although I can’t promise how long it’ll be before you have to flip through so many “older” page links on the category and tag pages that it’s harder to find that way. If I see a master page collecting all the Definitions Of E essays into one guide I’ll post that.

## Author: Joseph Nebus

I was born 198 years to the day after Johnny Appleseed. The differences between us do not end there. He/him.

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