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Euler’s Number

Leonhard Euler (1707 – 1783)

Part of the peterjamesthomas.com Maths and Science archive

Euler’s Number. The name is evocative. Leonhard Euler was one of the

greatest Mathematicians and certainly one of the most prolific. As was
typical in his time, Euler was a polymath, also making contributions to
Astronomy, Engineering, Optics and what we would now call Physics.
He produced deep results in a range of Mathematical fields and was
innovative in both his ideas and terminology; being the first to
introduce the fundamental concept of a function, to use the modern
notation of trigonometric functions and to employ the Greek letter   to
denote summation. This brief article cannot possibly do justice to the
measure of his work in Mathematics, but the words of renowned
contemporary Laplace provide some idea of the respect in which he
was held:
“Lisez Euler, lisez Euler, c’est notre maître à tous.” [1]
So if a number is named after Euler, then it is likely to be pretty
important [2]. This is indeed the case, Euler’s Number is probably the
most important number in Mathematics and I aim to give a flavour of
why in this brief article. In order to do this, I need to lay some
groundwork and some of this will be in areas that Euler himself
advanced: functions, limits and differential calculus. But first some
background.
 
 
Hail to e blithe constant  [3]

Euler’s number is written as  . Its decimal representation is a non-

terminating, non-repeating number which begins:
 
Non-terminating means that the numbers in the decimal
representation of   go on for ever. Non-repeating means that they
never settle down to any pattern (e.g. a counter-example would be the
repeating sequence:  ).
My recollection from school [4] was that   was introduced as the base of
Natural Logarithms. Rather circuitously, Natural Logarithms were
defined as ones with a base of  . I am just about old enough to have
come across tables of logarithms while at school, something that
disappeared with the advent of electronic calculators shortly
thereafter. Such tables were used to facilitate the multiplication of
numbers, for reasons I will explain soon. However, let’s first of all
consider the genesis of logarithms, raising numbers to powers, or
exponentiation.
 
 
The Power of Exponentiation
Let’s start with something even more familiar, multiplication. This is
nothing bar repeated addition. So:

or symmetrically:

More generally, for two numbers   and  , we define:

or again symmetrically:

Of course the   is often elided in Mathematics, we write   instead

of 
Exponentiation is the next step in this ladder [5]. This consists of
repeated multiplication. So we have:

or more generally [6]:

In passing we will note some properties of exponentiation:

We can see how   is derived from the definition of exponents easily
as follows:
The other two identities are just as simply derived.

 provides the insight that negative exponents are reciprocals and

powers of reciprocals:

So (recalling that anything to the power zero is equal to one):

 also allows us to consider fractional exponents as follows:

So:

There are even ways to raise digits to the power of Complex Numbers.
However, now that we have some background on exponentiation
under our belt, we can think about logarithms.
 

 
As Easy as Falling off a Log

Logarithms are defined in terms of exponentiation. Consider:

We then define the logarithm of   base   as follows:

I.e. the logarithm of   base   is the power to which   must be raised in
order for it to equal  .
Some examples include:

It should be noted that, though I am using Natural Numbers in the

examples above, the definition of logarithms extends to fractions
(aka Rational Numbers) and even – as we will see in a bit – numbers
that cannot be expressed as fractions (aka Irrational Numbers)
We can now see why tables of logarithms used to be helpful.
Supposing we wanted to multiply two largish numbers, say   
and  . Then:
Then we have that:

and by   above, we have:

Algorithmically, we take the logarithms of each multiplicand, add

these and then raise 10 to the power of the resulting number. In this
case:

Which is a reasonable approximation to the actual answer, probably

close enough for most practical purposes. As adding the logarithms is
easier then multiplying two nine digit numbers (of course assuming
that tables of logarithms have already been created), this approach
historically saved labour.
Using both the definition of logarithms and the properties of
exponents noted in   above, we have:

Natural Logarithms are ones where the base is Euler’s number,  .

Hence if:

We then define the Natural Logarithm of   as follows:

 [7]
I.e. the power to which we must raise   to obtain  .
Well so far, so good, but we haven’t really got any insight as yet as to
how Euler’s Number arises, or why it is so special. To obtain this we
need to first spend some time contemplating
functions, slopes and slopes of functions.
 
The Proper Function of Man  [8]

Functions are one of the central concepts in Mathematics. They

embody a relationship between a set of inputs and a set of outputs. A
function can be thought of as a set of instructions on how to transform
each input into each output. There is the proviso that each input has
just one output. Thus the mapping between a function’s inputs and its
outputs can be one-to-one or many-to-one, but never one-to-many
(see below).

A function (typically denoted by one of  ,    or  , when not a Greek

letter) might take the set of Integers ( ) to the same set by adding   to
each input number. The way that the notation works, if we call this
function  , we have:

This may be read as “a function   maps Integers to other Integers, by

the recipe of adding   to each input number”.
We can also write more concisely:

To take a few examples, we have:

Here we can see that the function is one-to-one, each output comes
from only one input. Output   can only come from input   and no
other number.
 
Aside:

We may in passing have also discovered the concept of the inverse of a function here and also
stumbled across the fact that this only exists for one-to-one functions. The inverse of a
function   is a second function, labeled   which “undoes” the transformation enacted by  .
So if   then  .

This also means that  .

In our example where   then  .

Let’s instead consider a different function (which we can also label   [9])
that also maps Integers to the same set, this time by squaring each
input [10]. Here we have:

and:

If we revisit our previous examples, we have:

This time, we can see that the function is many-to-one, for

example  .
So far, we have looked at discrete inputs and outputs [11] If we keep the
same recipe for our function, but change the input and output sets to
both be the Real Numbers( ), then our same function   can be
visualised as a line on a graph:

 – the input – is (unsurprisingly) plotted on the horizontal x-axis

and   – the output – is plotted on the vertical y-axis.
Not only are the input and output numbers continuous [12], the line
generated by the function is smooth, i.e. it has no sudden changes in
direction. We will be coming back to this concept of smoothness very
shortly.
So far I have covered functions that are powers of  , we could also
define functions where a number is raised to the power of  ,
so   is a function. Later we will be considering a special
function:

After this very brief introduction to functions, we hopefully

understand them enough to move on to the next concept, slopes, or
more properly gradients.
 

 
Why is a Blotter like a Lazy Dog?
The joke is rather dated (our writing tools have changed over the
years), but:
A blotter is an ink-lined plane
An inclined plane is a slope up
A slow pup is a lazy dog
– Anonymous
Here we will consider slopes up and indeed down and tie this to some
of the earlier work in the article.
The road sign above provides a starting point and also the suggestion
that gradients are ratios. Let’s start with a very simple example, where
a “hill” is 5 miles long and has a rise of half a mile [13]; this is shown in
the left-hand diagram below (please note that vertical distances have
been exaggerated to aid clarity):
The gradient of the left hand slope is defined as how much height is
gained divided by how much distance it takes to gain this height. In
our example we have:

As our slope up is a straight line, the gradient is the same at any point.
If we drew smaller triangles anywhere on our “hill”, the numerator
and denominator of our gradient equation would change, but their
ratio would remain constant. By way of contrast, consider the slope up
in the right-hand diagram. Here we can see that the gradient changes
as we go up. However, the average gradient is still the overall distance
climbed divided by the overall horizontal distance covered. So in our
example, the average gradient of both hills is the same [14].
Aside:

The definition of gradient above should have some bells ringing from another area,
Trigonometry. Let’s pause for a brief refresher on the basics of this. Consider a generic right-
angled triangle as in the figure below:

Here the bottom left-hand angle has a value of  , the hypotenuse has length  , the adjacent side
has length   and the opposite side has a length of  . We then have the following definitions:
We can see that the definition of   is the same as that of gradient above.

Now let’s consider just the first two miles of the climb for both of our
examples as follows (the segment highlighted in red below):

We can see that – consistent with our observation about smaller

triangles above – the gradient of the left-hand “hill” is:

However that of the right-hand “hill” is:

While the average gradient of both climbs is the same,

the local details of gradient differ.
What if, instead of looking at the gradient across some subset of the
five mile climb on the right, we wanted to assess the steepness of the
slope at various points. How would we go about this?
Well using the smaller triangles (the ones with a base of 2 miles) above
suggests one approach. Supposing we wanted to know the slope of our
right-hand “hill” at the 2 mile mark. Well we could construct a triangle
whose base started on the “hill” at this point and stretched a little way
to the right, say half a mile (or 880 yards [15]). If we zoom in, this might
look like the following (again recall that vertical distances have been
exaggerated in the diagram):

Our measurement of the gradient of this triangle is as follows:

This seems like a decent estimate of the slope at 2 miles, but we could
improve on it. What if we made the triangle smaller, so that its base
was a quarter of a mile, or 100 yards, or 1 yard, or an inch. Intuitively
it would seem that the smaller the triangle, the closer its slope would
be to the actual gradient two miles into the climb. Indeed it would
seem evident that if a certain level of precision in measuring the
gradient was required, this could be achieved simply by drawing a
small enough triangle.
The last paragraph may have seemed a little hand-wavy, but it is
actually based on rigorous Mathematics. Once more this was an area
to which Euler contributed strongly, the concept of limits.
 
 

The Sky is the Limit

The introductory part of this section is adapted from my book on
Group Theory and Particle Physics, Glimpses of Symmetry  [16]
In antiquity, Zeno of Elea propounded a number of paradoxes to do
with motion. Here I am going to conflate two of them [17], but hopefully
offer a simplification at the same time.
 Some picture elements are © Randall Munroe of xkcd.com
Consider an arrow being loosed towards a target. My simplification of
Zeno’s argument – contrary to all experience of the physical world – is
that it will never get there. The argument is as follows:

1. In order to reach the target, the arrow must first cover half of
the distance. Leaving half the distance to be traversed.
 
2. Next it must cover half of the remaining distance, or a quarter
of the total distance. Leaving a quarter of the distance to be
traversed.
 
3. Next it must cover half of the remaining distance, or an eighth
of the total distance. Leaving an eighth of the distance to be
traversed.
 
4. And so on…

Because this process can be extended indefinitely, the arrow will

always be short of the target. The distance it is short by will decrease
rapidly of course, but there will always be a small distance still to be
covered.
Therefore the arrow will never reach the target.
There is actually no paradox here and the theory of limits deals with
any messiness quite nicely. Again Euler was a major figure in this area
of Mathematics. To introduce it, let’s consider the distance remaining
to travel in the above example. This forms a sequence as follows:

If we say that   is the zeroth [18] term and   the first, then in general

the  th
 term of this sequence is  .
What happens to   as   gets bigger and bigger? Well clearly it gets
smaller and smaller. Suppose we are engaged in a game with someone,
our adversary can name a number as small as they like and then we

have to name a smaller one of the form  , where   is a Natural

Number. Let’s see how a few rounds might play out:

Opponent’s Number Your Choice of 

0.1 4 0.0625

0.01 7 0.0078125

0.001 10 0.0009765625

It is probably evident that we will alway have the upper hand over our
opponent. Indeed if we generalise by saying that the number they pick
is denoted by  , then we get to use logarithms again and only need to
find   such that:

(of course if   then   for any base  )

So all we need to do to win our game is to pick   as the next Natural
Number up from   and we win.
In situations like this, where   gets bigger and bigger without limit, we

say that   tends to infinity ( ). We can describe what happens to   

as   tends to infinity by saying that   tends to zero. We can write this
using some special notation:
This can be read as “the limit of   as   tends to infinity is zero”.
The sense is that, if we can get arbitrarily close to a given value (in this
case 0) by taking a large enough term in the sequence, then as the
sequence wends its way to infinity, it actually reaches the given value,
rather than just approaching it. Although this is not a very rigorous
way of putting things Mathematically, we are sort of saying:

 Aside:

We formalise this result in exactly the way we established in our game above. We say:

If and only if, for any  , we can find a value of   such that:

That is however small a number is selected we can find a value of   that is closer to zero than
the number. By picking   we see that this assertion is true.

If we want to be more general, then if our sequence is   then:

If and only if, for any  , we can find a value of   such that:

 [19]

Again the sense is that as   tends to infinity,   tends to  .

Before closing this introduction to limits, we will cover just one more
concept. If the distance remaining to be covered in our version of
Zeno’s paradox is the infinite sequence we have been working with
above, the distance that has been covered is instead an infinite series.
Infinite series involve adding terms, the ones in this case are:

Using the notation that Euler himself introduced, we can write this as:

which can be read as “the sum of   from   to infinity”.

Formally, in terms of limits, what this means is:

The term on the right of the equals sign is called a partial sum. It
captures the first   terms in our series. This gives us a mechanism to
talk about a limit, by letting   tend to infinity.

A corollary of the limit we established for the sequence   is that:

This is – in a nutshell – why motion is actually possible.

Having developed quite a bit of Mathematical machinery, much of it
due to Euler himself, in the next two sections, we will begin to
combine these concepts, first by considering the gradient of a function.
 
 
What difference does it make?
The introductory part of this section is also adapted from my book on
Group Theory and Particle Physics, Glimpses of Symmetry  [20]
In the section on gradients, we explored a way to find the slope of a
“hill” at a given point using smaller and smaller triangles to increase
precision. Some similarity between this process and the work we have
just covered about limits is probably evident. Let’s drop our discussion
of “hills” and be clear that what we want to be able to do is to
determine the gradient of functions at specific points (we can think
about drawing these functions on graph paper and measuring their
slopes). Indeed, if our function is  , what we would like to do is to
generate a second function,  , which captures the gradient at any
point   [21]. Thus   will be the slope of   at the point   and   
will be the slope of   at the point  .
The function   is called the derivative of  . The process of
generating   from   is called differentiation and is part of the
grand edifice of The Calculus as developed independently by
both Newton and Leibniz in the late 1600s.

While   itself is often used to denote the differential. There are a

couple of other ways it is shown, first:

We read this as “the derivative of   with respect to  ”, or just “df by
dx” (pronounced “dee-eff by dee-ecks”).

Alternatively, if we set  :

Similarly, we read this as “the derivative of   with respect to  ”, or just
“dy by dx”.
If we go back to our previous approach of drawing small triangles, but
apply this to a function,  , then – for some small distance along the
x-axis,   – we have:
Using our previous definition of gradient and considering the red
triangle above, we have our estimate of the slope at point   is given by:

Further as we shrink the size of   (and thereby the red triangle), we
can appeal to our work on limits to define:

Let’s use this approach on a function we met earlier,  . We

then have:

But:

So:
As, rather obviously,  , we have established that:

We can use similar arguments to show more generically that:

, where 
I.e. to get the derivative of   you “bring the   down and reduce the
power of   by one”, a nice simple rule [22]. We will be using this result in
the next section.
 
Aside:

We have defined the process of differentiation of a function,  , to produce its

derivative,  . As   is itself a function, we can also differentiate it [23] to obtain the
following:

If we want to write this in terms of our initial function, then:

We can similarly form higher order derivatives such as  , or indeed   for
the   derivative. These can have a variety of physical meanings.

Rather than providing many other examples of the derivatives of

functions, it is time to cut to the chase and ask a question about
differentiation that will lead us to our ultimate goal.
 
 

Self-determination
A we mentioned when introducing the topic, a function   of a
variable   is essentially a recipe for getting an output,  , from an
input,  . What is the meaning of the derivative in this context? Well it
depends. Suppose that   is a time input (it would typically be denoted
by   rather than   in this case) and that the function yields how far
something has travelled after a certain time, then the derivative of the
function would be how fast the object is travelling (distance over
time). Suppose that instead   is once more time but that   is the
number of bacteria in a petri dish. The derivative would then tell us
how fast the population of bacteria is growing at a point in time.
This second example is germane as – all other things being equal [24] –
the number of bacteria at a future point is determined by how many
there are now. This is because most bacteria reproduce by binary
fission; each cell splits in two and so the number of bacteria doubles
with each new generation. So if we have   now, we will soon
have  .
In an idealised situation, we would have the following number of
bacteria at each successive generation:
Numerically, we have:

We can see that the rate of growth of the culture is dependent on its
size, the bigger it is, the faster it grows. Putting this Mathematically,
the derivative of the function giving us the population is dependent on
the population itself, or  , where   means “proportional to”.
Returning to our idealised state, we could rewrite the number of
bacteria over time as:

E. coli split as frequently as every 20 minutes. If we took our time

input as being chunks of 20 minutes, then we could form a rough
formula as follows:

Where   is 20 minutes,   is 40 minutes and so on.

We seem to have created a function involving exponentiation, more on
this shortly.
But now let’s abandon our bacteria before they engulf us and instead
ask a more generic question. Can we find a function   such that:

That is a function whose derivative is precisely the function itself (or

equivalently, the slope at a point is the value of the function at the
same point)?
Well there are any number of ways that we could approach this, let’s
just try some things out in a naive manner. I’ll take as a starting place
our observation above that:

We can form a table using this result as follows:

 [25]

 [26]
 A pattern appears here, the derivative of a function on one row is a
multiple of the function on the previous row. Let’s look at what
happens when we differentiate the terms we have in the table above
put together in an expression:

Well that’s an interesting result. The derivative is close to the initial

expression, but with all terms moving one place to the right.There is
certainly a relationship between   and  . There are however a couple
of problems:

1. The coefficients of each term (the numbers we multiply each

power of   by) don’t match up. They are all   in the first equation and
are the sequence   in the second one.
 
2. We have lost our   term and so   is truncated

Can we fix these issues? Well to address the first point, we could try
modifying our expression to be:

What happens when we differentiate this? Well we get:

At first sight, all seems good. However, having modified the definition
of  , our derivative is still not equal to the original function. We
have another trick that we need to play in order to make progress.
Consider instead:

What is the derivative of this?

Cancelling out the same terms in each numerator and denominator,
we get:

Which, if we drop the initial   is indeed the same as our latest
definition of  , save that (problem 2) we have lost the term in  .
Before moving on to address our second difficulty, a note about
numbers like  , we call these factorials and they have a
special notation, so:

and more generally:

Using this notation (and noting that   is defined to equal  ) we can
write our latest version of   as:

So what about our missing   term in  ? Where could we get such a
term from? Well if we added an   term to  , then this would work,
but we have just moved the problem along one, we now have no term
in   in the derivative. How to resolve this conundrum? What we need
is a constant supply of higher powers of   to slot into place in the
derivative.
Well the concept of an infinite series as explored above comes to the
rescue. Instead of the expression for   cutting off, what if we define
it as:

or using Euler’s summation notation:

We then have [27]:

So we have constructed at least one function   with the property

that  . In fact it can be shown that there is only one such
function. Because this function is so special, it has its own notation, we
say:

The choice of  , as well as the emergence of an exponential

function (i.e.  ) in our discussions about bacteria perhaps gives
the game away. In fact what we have is:

These equalities were proved directly by Euler again, though both

Newton and Leibniz had come up with less direct and more
convoluted proofs in the 1600s.

We call  , or equivalently  , The Exponential Function,

employing a definite article to signify its uniqueness and importance.

If we consider the value of  , we have:

Here we return to the beginning with a formula that expresses Euler’s

Number as an infinite sum. Sometimes this is where people start to
learn about   [28]. However we have taken a journey that has highlighted
not just that Euler’s Number is important (something that could be
deduced by its ubiquity in Mathematics and related disciplines)
but why it is important and how it arises. It is from the self-reference
of The Exponential Function that the power (no pun intended) of   
arises and to which its many beautiful properties may be ascribed.
 

 
Closing Thoughts
There are many other things to be said about   and The Exponential
Function. For example, several fundamental results arise by
considering The Exponential Function acting on the set of Complex
Numbers. Just one of these is the equation appearing above, which is
often described as the most elegant in Mathematics and which ties
together five of its most fundamental constants. It is of course named
after its discoverer and called Euler’s Identity. This margin is too
narrow to contain a proper derivation of Euler’s Identity [29], but this is
covered more fully in The Equation.
I will close by again reemphasising the self-referential manner in
which The Exponential Function and Euler’s Number arise. As in
several areas of Mathematics, self-reference leads to the emergence of
interesting features. Also some of the apparatus we have developed
allows the Exponential Function to be applied to many different
Mathematical objects. We have mentioned Complex Numbers above,
we can even do things like raising Euler’s Number to the power of a
matrix [30]. In developing theories relating to the Exponential Function,
as is much of the rest of his work, Euler opened up new Mathematical
vistas, terrain which intrepid Mathematicians explore to this very day.
I hope in this piece that I have given some flavour of his unique vision.

 
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Acknowledgements
The following people’s input is acknowledged:

 Carey G. Butler, for pointing out a number of typographical

errors.
 JohnKathy Mapp, who noticed that I was starting many of my
summations at   where   was what it should have been.
 John S. Garavelli, who noticed I was erroneously using a   in
equation   above, when a   would have been more in keeping with
the equation.
 Caleb Fitzgerald, who pointed out a glitch in one of my examples
of logarithms.
 Jonathan Baker, who pointed out an error in equation (3).
 Paul Macey, who straightened out my many-to-one and one-to-
many text, which had got twisted.

Of course any [other] errors and omissions remain the responsibility

of the author.
 
<< When I’m 65 The Equation >>

Part of the peterjamesthomas.com Maths and Science archive.

 
Notes
 
 
[1]
Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all.
 
 
[2]
Euler has the distinction of having a second number also named after him. The other
is the Euler–Mascheroni constant.

 
 
[3]
Sorry Percy :-o.

 
 
[4]
Many years ago and so perhaps not to be relied upon 100%.

 
 
[5]
The one after exponentiation is called tetration. It consists of repeated exponentiation,
but this is outside of the scope of this article.

 
 
[6]
Here we note that, unlike multiplication,   is not in general the same as  .
E.g.   and  .

 
 
[7]
In Pure Mathematics, the assumption is made that if   is used with no explicit base,
then the base is   and the meaning is Natural Logarithm. In other disciplines (and
many scientific calculators), the formulation   is used instead.

 
 
[8]
I’m sure Jack London meant to add “or Woman”.

 
 
[9]
 gets used almost as much as   in Mathematics.

 
 
[10]
A point here is that while the output set is  , the function only maps to values greater
than or equal to zero (any negative number is mapped to a positive one). There is a
 term for the subset of the output range that a function covers, but we won’t be going
in to this today.

 
 
[11]
A set like the Integers is called discrete because there are gaps between its members,
indeed there are an infinite number of values between any two Integers, say   and  .
If there are no gaps, the set is instead called continuous.

 
 
[12]
I.e. with no gaps in them, see Note 11 above.

 
 
[13]
The units are immaterial, kilometres would have worked just as well, or cubits for
that matter. We will drop units soon enough in what follows.

 
 
[14]
Of course it is average gradient that appears on road signs as hills are seldom nice
straight lines.

 
 
[15]
Recall that there are 1,760 yards in a mile.

 
 
[16]
Specifically a section in Chapter 21 – SU(3) and the Meaning of Lie.

 
 
[17]
The first relates to Achilles and a Tortoise having a race, where the Tortoise has a
head start; by the time Achilles has reached the Tortoise’s staring point, the Tortoise
has moved – an so on. This paradox relates to fractions of distance covered, but is
more complicated than is strictly necessary to make the point. The second paradox
relates to an arrow in flight; arguing that at any instant in time, the arrow occupies a
point, so therefore it cannot be moving. This paradox is more to do with the nature of
time as it pertains to motion. Here I have blended the two to make what I think is a
simpler example.
 
 
[18]
It makes the format of the generic term easier to start with zero.

 
 
[18]
It makes the format of the generic term easier to start with zero.

 
 
[19]
Here   stands for the modulus of  , which is effectively its absolute size. That
is  .

 
 
[20]
Specifically a section in Chapter 20 – Power to Truth, which shares the same name.
Any chance to reference a Smiths song is of course welcome.

 
 
[21]
We can do this if the original function,   is both continuous and smooth. Smooth
has a specific technical meaning, which we won’t get into here. The general sense is
not a million miles from the day-to-day meaning of the word.

 
 
[22]
Somewhat sadly, schoolchildren are generally taught the rule before being shown
why it works.

 
 
[23]
Assuming that   is smooth of course. We spoke before about smooth functions.
In Mathematical terms, a smooth function is one that you can differentiate as many
times as you want (possibly reaching 0 of course).

 
 
[24]
Nutrients, space to grow, cells being immortal etc.

 
 
[25]
We could of course rely upon our generic formula for the derivative, but if a function
 is equal to a constant, here 1, then it is a horizontal straight line when plotted on a
graph. As with real hills, the gradient of a level line is zero.

 
 
[26]
Again, we can see this result directly without recourse to our generic formula.
If   then the graph of   is a straight line going up from the origin at
45°. The slope of such a line is a constant one as each increase in the horizontal axis
is matched by the same increase in the vertical axis.

 
 
[27]
We are able to make the last step in this chain of equalities for the same reason that
we could drop   in earlier expressions, namely:

For   we have 

which can also be dropped allowing our sum to start from   and clearly:

 
 
[28]
The other, and perhaps less interesting, starting point is of course compound interest.
 
 
[29]
With apologies to Pierre de Fermat of course.
 
 
[30]
See a section of Glimpses of Symmetry, Chapter  20 – Power to Truth.