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necovek • yesterday at 9:15 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

> Whether the infinite-series summation limits are worth knowing is questionable, though. That's more of historical interest.

A very common example is compound, continual interest accumulation. As a mathematician, I had trouble understanding how banks calculate it (as they would obviously not point me at the derivation of the formula), but it's actually a limit sum over infinitely small interest terms.

Similarly, these techniques work to explain and derive numerical methods for calculating many natural constants like e, pi etc.


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1-more • yesterday at 9:23 PM

The only intuitive definition of e I can remember is "how much $1 becomes after a year in a savings account with 100% interest compounded infinitely" funny enough.