From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 09 2002 - 21:49:54 MST
At 05:21 PM 3/9/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>I offer a tiny correction:
>
>Ken Clements wrote:
> > The fact that pi is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a
> circle
> > in flat Euclidean geometry, is just one of its manifold
> properties. One of the
> > most far-reaching was discovered by Leonhard Euler circa 1736. He
> showed that
> > if you started with the constant e and raised that to the power of the
> product
> > of pi and the square root of -1, then added one, you got zero.
>
>I think you meant "...and raised that to the power of (pi raised to the power
>of the square root of -1),...".
No, it really is e ^ (i * pi) = (e ^ i) * ( e ^ pi) = -1 and let me tell
you its darn useful for solving second order differential equations (as I'm
learning this semester).
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