system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: The number 'e'.

Hey. I was listening to a radio show in which they were discussing statistics, and they threw out "e" without any explanation.

In this case, they used it to decide that the statistically significant number of people out of a group of 100 was 36.

I have no maths knowledge beyond what I learned in high school, so all the explanations I found on google have been far beyond my comprehension. 

So please, if you will, what is e? And what does it mean?
gpt
e is one of the fundamental constants in math.

You probably know some of the others.  Like the arithmetic identity (0) - if you add the arithmetic identity to any number, you get the number back.  You probably also know the multiplicative identity (1) - if you multiply the multiplicative identity to any number, you get the number back.

e is what might be termed the 'differential identity'.  If you take the integral or derivative of the exponential function e^x, you get back e^x.  So just like you need to pay a lot of attention to your 1's and 0's with multiplication and addition, you pay a lot of attention your e's when you're using calculus.