e-Day

e-Day is an annual celebration observed on February 7th of each year. It is not the day for the internet or internet waste as you may think. So are you getting a question what this Day is all about then? You would have used the term ‘e’ in your math classes, and this celebration is just for it. Nothing weird in such a celebration as there are not so many celebration days in the calendar meant for such mathematical terms. The e-Day celebrates the mathematical constant ‘e,’ that has a value equivalent to 2.7182818. The constant e is also called as Euler’s number named after the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler.

“For the sake of brevity, we will always represent this number 2.718281828459… by the letter e.” – Leonhard Euler

History of e-Day

The year from when the e-Day has been in the celebration is unknown. There is no exact mention of the person who created such a day for the mathematical constant ‘e.’ However, there is a reason for choosing February 7th as the date for this celebration. As the first two digits of the mathematical constant ‘e’ have a value 2.7182818 and it can be written concerning the month-day (m/d) format as 2/7. Hence the second month of the seventh day is the e-Day. In some other parts of the world that follows the day/month format celebrates this day on January 27 (27/1). The Euler’s constant ‘e’ is also known as the “Euler’s number” after the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. The term ‘e’ is a mathematical constant that represents the base of the natural logarithm. i.e., the unique number whose natural logarithm is equal to one and is approximately equal to 2.71828.

The mathematical constant ‘e’  is an irrational number, and a transcendental number that represents the idea of all continually growing systems are a scaled version of a common rate. The constant e is mostly used in the logarithms, complex numbers, and in the exponential growth. ‘e’  is also used to calculate Continuous Compound Interest and is used in computing various aspects of the Atmospheric Pressure and other natural phenomena. Euler’s constant ‘e’  is one of the most important numbers in the mathematics, including 0, 1 and pi (π). The mathematical constant, e is sometimes called as the Napier’s Constant. It is most often incorrectly referred to the Euler’s Constant which is denoted by the lower case gamma (γ) with value 0.57721.

The term was discovered by several mathematicians like Oughtred, Jacob Bernoulli, Huygens, Mercator and Leibniz. However, they didn’t know its significance. It was first referenced in a book of logarithms by John Napier during the early 17th century. The first known use of e hadn’t come out until 1690 when Gottfried Leibniz used it in correspondence to the Christiaan Huygens. In that correspondence, the letter ‘b’ was used instead of ‘e.’ It wasn’t until Leonhard Euler who decided to use ‘e’ as to express this Euler’s constant which finally began to become the mathematical standard.

How to Celebrate e-Day

Celebrating the e-Day is quite simple. Get to know and learn more about Euler’s number, its usage and its importance in the field of mathematics and science. You can make your child know about the history of the ‘e.’ Fill up your mouth with foods starting with the letter with ‘e.’ You can eat eggs, eggplant, eggnog, or eclairs and more. Share your e-Day celebrations pictures and your views on the social media using the hashtag #eDay.