Intuitive Understanding of the constant "$e$" Potentially related-questions, shown before posting, didn't have anything like this, so I apologize in advance if this is a duplicate.


I know there are many ways of calculating (or should I say "ending up at") the constant e.  How would you explain e concisely?
It's a rather beautiful number, but when friends have asked me "what is e?" I'm usually at a loss for words -- I always figured the math explains it, but I would really like to know how others conceptualize it, especially in common-language (say, "English").  

related but not the same: Could you explain why $\frac{d}{dx} e^x = e^x$ "intuitively"?

Professor Ghrist of University of Pennsylvania would say that e^x is the sum of the infinite series with k going from zero to infinity of (x^k)/k!.  If you are interested in Euler's number then you should not miss his Calculus of a Single Variable Course on Coursera
