Thursday, March 15, 2007

The day after π-day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_day) let me celebrate the other, unsung hero of transcendental numbers, I mean the number e, of course. If π is the poet of numbers, e is their workhorse, straddling pure and applied math, bearing the burden as the ... base. Let me propose an e-day! Let's see possible candidates: Obvious digital patterns: February 7 (with e-minute at 6:28 PM) July 2 (European) April 15 (Euler's taxing b-day) April 4 (Napier's death day---grim!---his b-day is unknown) Shall we vote? By the way, if MIT bakes the πs, Wall St. should foot the e-party's bill given that e is the foundation stone of quantitative finance ...
And after that we can establish Transcendental Day. I propose February 3 with trans-minute at 2:06 PM. (eπ ~ 23.1406926327793... the simplest function of the two giants of transcendence that has been proven transcendental, aka Gelfond's constant, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_number)

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