Numbers comprise a string of digits that are used to represent various quantities and amounts. Each number designates the size of some quantity that is either large or small. Numbers can be of ...

What is the most bizarre real number that you can imagine? Probably many people think of an irrational number such as pi (π) or Euler’s number. And indeed, such values can be considered “wild.” After ...

When my students grow too dependent on their calculators, I ask them to find a number that, when multiplied by itself, gives them 2. Students quickly see that since 1² = 1 and 2² = 4, the answer has ...

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and ...

The p-adics form an infinite collection of number systems based on prime numbers. They’re at the heart of modern number theory. The rational numbers are the most familiar numbers: 1, -5, ½, and every ...

Whenever political scientists want to demonstrate how little the public knows about politics, one of the statistics they're fond of pulling out is that more than half of Americans can't name any ...

Lois Lee receives funding from the John Templeton Foundation. Many atheists think that their atheism is the product of rational thinking. They use arguments such as “I don’t believe in God, I believe ...

Leadership is often associated with making tough decisions, and leaders are frequently judged by the decisions they make and their impacts. However, how these decisions are made can have a significant ...

Irrational numbers are numbers that cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers. This is opposed to rational numbers, like 2, 7, one-fifth and -13/9, which can be, and are, expressed as the ...

I’ve written about AI’s capabilities and limitations fairly often, exploring topics like the challenges of using AI to personalize decisions, how its reliance on past data shapes its predictive power, ...

In the early 1970s mathematician Donald Knuth spent a sabbatical with his wife in Norway. The time was meant to be spent relaxing. Yet one night he woke up his partner in a state of agitation. He ...