I have come across this notation quiet a number of times. All along I thought the e was for the Euler e which is equal to 2.718…. The e is actually scientific notation for 10^n. So 5e4 means 5x10^4.
I thought i should just share in case someone gets confused with this. I would like to believe people in the sciences would already know this.
Thanks for your tip.
Another interpretation I found in the notes…but also means the same thing as above.
Note: The
e+<number>in the output denotes how many places the decimal point should
be moved. For example,3.24e+03is equal to3240
Hello @gaolatlhe,
One other interpretation is that the scientific notation shows us the “Order of magnitude” of that number. Very often we want to compare the order of magnitude between two numbers. For example, a human walks at speed in the order of 10^0 \text{km/hr}, bike 10^1, car 10^2, flight 10^3, earth (relative to the sun) 10^4…
Raymond