By the way, writing originated from accounting, again in the same region, and possibly in Egypt also, about the same time, if not a bit earlier. That is, this finance and accounting have been with us for millennia; since the beginning of agricultural production. There is no production without finance and accounting.
Best, Sabri On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 8:00 PM, Sabri Oncu <[email protected]> wrote: > Joanna: > >> The first mention of the natural logarithm was by Nicholas Mercator in his >> work Logarithmotechnia published in >> 1668, [ 2 ] although the mathematics teacher John Speidell had already in >> 1619 compiled a table on the natural >> logarithm. [ 3 ] It was formerly also called hyperbolic logarithm, [ 4 ] as >> it corresponds to the area under a hyperbola . >> It is also sometimes referred to as the Napierian logarithm , although the >> original meaning of this term is slightly different. >> >> ??? > > Much earlier than that. Goes back to Babylonia of BC 2000s. The > formula (1+r/n)^(nt) is how much you will pay back to your lender t > years later if your interest rate is r per year and interest is > compounded n times a year. The number "e" originated from debt/finance > in Mesopotamia about 4000-5000 years ago. Babylonians knew about > logarithms then, although not exactly in the same way we now know. It > was not science, it was finance from which the exponential function > originated. > > Best, > Sabri _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
