Thank you for taking the time to explain, with a diagram even. Another comment mentioned "radix economy", which, together with your description helped me under

Thank you for taking the time to explain, with a diagram even. Another comment mentioned "radix economy", which, together with your description helped me understand (generally) why Euler's constant is the most efficient base in terms of number of digits needed to express numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy