Peter Kaminski: Irrational? Transcendental!
Peter points out that the number Google choose as the amount they would raise in the IPO could have a not-so-hidden meaning:
Wow! Reading Bambi Francisco's CBS MarketWatch article, I see that Google chose to raise $2,718,281,828 in their IPO. Why such an irrational (wink, wink) number?
It turns out that 2.718281828... (...and an infinite number of digits after that) is 'e', the base of the natural logarithm. Because it can't be expressed as a ratio of two numbers, it's known mathematically as "irrational" -- something some bankers might say about the way Google is going public. However, 'e' also happens to be "transcendental," another fancy property of a number that means it can't be expressed by a finite number of algebraic operations. Maybe Google is making a little wordplay -- saying they expect to transcend expectations -- to overcome or notably exceed ordinary limits.
Cool ideas from folks with bigger brains than myself. The first comment on his post is a good one too.