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The Number e and the Exponential Function

Michael Fowler, UVa Disclaimer: these notes are not mathematically rigorous. Instead, they present quick, and, I hope, plausible, derivations of the properties of e, ex and the natural logarithm.
n The Limit lim(1 + 1 n) = e n
2 1 3 1 n Consider the following series: (1 + 1), (1+ 1 2 ) , (1 + 3 ) , ..., (1 + n ) ,... where n runs through the positive integers. What happens as n gets very large?

Its easy to find out if you use a scientific calculator having the function x^y. The first three terms are 2, 2.25, 2.37. You can use your calculator to confirm that for n = 10, 100, 1000, n 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000 the values of (1 + 1 n ) are (rounding off) 2.59, 2.70, 2.717, 2.718,
n 2.71827, 2.718280. These calculations strongly suggest that as n goes up to infinity, (1 + 1 n)
n goes to a definite limit. It can be proved mathematically that (1 + 1 n ) does go to a limit, and this limiting value is called e. The value of e is 2.7182818283 .

n To try to get a bit more insight into (1 + 1 n ) for large n, let us expand it using the binomial theorem. Recall that the binomial theorem gives all the terms in (1 + x)n, as follows:

(1 + x) n = 1 + nx +

n( n 1) 2 n( n 1)(n 2) 3 x + x + ... + x n 2! 3!

n To use this result to find (1 + 1 n ) , we obviously need to put x = 1/n, giving:

n 1 (1 + 1 n ) = 1 + n. n +

n( n 1) 1 2 n(n 1)( n 2) 1 3 (n) + ( n ) + ... . 2! 3!

We are particularly interested in what happens to this series when n gets very large, because thats when we are approaching e. In that limit, n ( n 1) / n2 tends to 1, and so does

n ( n 1)( n 2 ) / n3 . So, for large enough n, we can ignore the n-dependence of these early terms in the series altogether!
When we do that, the series becomes just:
1+1+ 1 1 1 + + + ... 2! 3! 4!

2 And, the larger we take n, the more accurately the terms in the binomial series can be simplified n in this way, so as n goes to infinity this simple series represents the limiting value of (1 + 1 n) . Therefore, e must be just the sum of this infinite series. (Notice that we can see immediately from this series that e is less than 3, because 1/3! is less than 1/22, and 1/4! is less than 1/23, and so on, so the whole series adds up to less than 1 + 1 + + 1/22 + 1/23 + 1/24 + = 3.)

The Exponential Function ex

x n Taking our definition of e as the infinite n limit of (1 + 1 n ) , it is clear that e is the infinite n limit x nx of (1 + 1 n ) . Let us write this another way: put y = nx, so 1/n = x/y. Therefore, e is the infinite y
y limit of (1 + x y ) . The strategy at this point is to expand this using the binomial theorem, as

above, and get a power series for ex. (Footnote: there is one tricky technical point. The binomial expansion is only simple if the exponent is a whole number, and for general values of x, y = nx wont be. But remember we are only interested in the limit of very large n, so if x is a rational number a/b, where a and b are y integers, for n any multiple of b, y will be an integer, and pretty clearly the function (1 + x y ) is continuous in y, so we dont need to worry. If x is an irrational number, we can approximate it arbitrarily well by a sequence of rational numbers to get the same result.)
y So, we need to do the binomial expansion of (1 + x y ) where y is an integerto make this clear,

let us write y = m.
x m x (1 + m ) = 1 + m. m +

m(m 1) x 2 m(m 1)(m 2) x 3 (m) + ( m ) + ... 2! 3!

n Notice that this has exactly the same form as the binomial expansion of (1 + 1 n ) in the paragraph above, except that now a power of x appears in each term. Again, we are only interested in the limiting value as m goes to infinity, and in this limit m(m 1)/m2 goes to 1, as does m(m-1)(m2)/m3. Thus, as we take m to infinity, the m dependence of each term disappears, leaving

x m e x = lim(1 + m ) = 1+ x + m

x 2 x3 + + ... 2! 3!

Differentiating ex
d x d x 2 x3 x2 e = (1 + x + + + ...) = 1 + x + + ... dx dx 2! 3! 2!

3 so when we differentiate ex, we just get ex back. This means ex is the solution to the equation d2y dy = y , etc. More generally, replacing x by ax in the series = y , and also the equation dx 2 dx above gives e ax = 1 + ax + a 2 x 2 a3 x3 + + ... 2! 3!

and now differentiating the series term by term we see function eax

d 2 ax d ax e = a 2 e ax , etc., so the e = ae ax , dx 2 dx dy is the solution to differential equations of the form = ay , or of the form dx

d2y = a 2 y and so on. dx 2 Instead of differentiating term by term, we could have written e d ax e a( x +x ) e ax e = lim = lim x 0 x 0 dx x
ax

(e

ax

1)

= ae ax

where we have used ( e ax 1) ax in the limit x 0.

The Natural Logarithm

We define the natural logarithm function ln x as the inverse of the exponential function, by which we mean y = ln x, if x = ey Notice that weve switched x and y from the paragraph above! Differentiating the exponential function x = e y in this switched notation, dx dy 1 = e y = x , so = . dy dx x That is to say,
d 1 ln x = dx x

Therefore, ln x can be written as an integral, ln x =

z.
dz
1

4 You can check that this satisfies the differential equation by taking the upper limit of the integral to be x + x, then x, subtracting the second from the first, dividing by x , and taking x very small. But why have I taken the lower limit of the integral to be 1? In solving the differential equation in this way, I could have set the lower limit to be any constant and it would still be a solutionbut it would not be the inverse function to ey unless I take the lower limit 1, since that gives for the value x = 1 that y = ln x = 0. We need this to be true to be consistent with x = ey, since e0 = 1. Exercise: show from the integral form of ln x, that for small x, ln(1 + x) is approximately equal to x. Check with your calculator to see how accurate this is for x = 0.1, 0.01.
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