Malcontent Wes popped into the comments of our recent post on the mathematical improbability of vampires with a link to a blog post with a great math-vampire analogy: vampires are the imaginary ...

To a nonmathematician, having the letter "i" represent a number that does not quite exist and is "imaginary" can be hard to wrap your head around. If you open your mind to this way of thinking, ...

Have you ever sat in a math classroom and wondered, “When will I ever use this?” You might have asked yourself this question when you first encountered “imaginary” numbers, and with good reason: What ...

Mathematicians were disturbed, centuries ago, to find that calculating the properties of certain curves demanded the seemingly impossible: numbers that, when multiplied by themselves, turn negative.

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Imaginary numbers began as a desperate solution to equations that seemed unsolvable. In the 1500s, Italian mathematicians ...

The world of math is complex … in more ways than one. Sure, it’s full of complex ideas that are all tied up and packaged within beautiful and often times complex wrapping paper that is adorned with ...

American Scientist (ISSN 0003-0996) is an illustrated bimonthly magazine about science and technology. Each issue is filled with feature articles written by prominent scientists and engineers, ...