We had a little surprise this week as we saw e show up three different times. Since each kid only saw one of the ideas, I thought reviewing all three this morning would make for a great math project.
The first thing I did was introduce and review the ideas. Those ideas are:
(1) The proof that e is irrational,
(2) This idea from a Nassim Taleb Twitter thread:
(3) The idea in this twitter post from Sonia on Twitter:
Here’s the introduction to the ideas:
First we talked about the proof that e is irrational. My younger son saw this idea as an exercise in the number theory book he’s working through right now. The proof is accessible to kids, though a bit more difficult than some of the other proofs of irrationality the boys seen before:
Next we moved to the idea in Nassim Taleb’s tweet. The idea that 
Finally, we looked at the tweet from Sonia and discussed the simplified mathematical problem in the tweet and the surprising relationship to e:
I think these three ideas are fun ones for kids to see. The proof that e is irrational is something that I’m pretty sure I didn’t see until college, but is definitely accessible to kids. The other two ideas are really important ideas from calculus and probability and definitely worth exploring many times!
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