A geometric proof that $e$ is irrational and a new measure of its irrationality
History and Overview
2010-10-07 v2 Number Theory
Abstract
We give a simple geometric proof that is irrational, using a construction of a nested sequence of closed intervals with intersection . The proof leads to a new measure of irrationality for : if and are integers with , then , where is the smallest positive integer such that is a multiple of . We relate this measure for to a known one and to the greatest prime factor of an integer. We make two conjectures and recall a theorem of Cantor that can be proved by a similar construction.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0704.1282,
title = {A geometric proof that $e$ is irrational and a new measure of its irrationality},
author = {Jonathan Sondow},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0704.1282},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
7 pages, 1 figure, Addendum gives details on why the intersection of the intervals is $e$