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.

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, ...

Complex numbers seem to have an almost mystical aura surrounding them. Perhaps it’s because of the terminology used for them – for example, they have a ‘real part’ and an ‘imaginary part’, and they ...

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 ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Computer engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that using complex numbers—numbers with both real and imaginary components—can play an integral part in securing artificial ...

If you have ever read advanced textbooks or papers about electronics, you may have been surprised to see the use of complex numbers used in the analysis of AC circuits. A complex number has two parts: ...

Imagine winding the hour hand of a clock back from 3 o’clock to noon. Mathematicians have long known how to describe this rotation as a simple multiplication: A number representing the initial ...

Now, on to the subject of complex numbers. We have stayed away from this subject until now simply because we did not want to confuse things. Initially, it is easy to think of signals as “real valued.” ...

To celebrate Pi Day, we asked several mathematicians to tell us their favorite non-pi numbers. Here are some of their answers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

An international team of researchers shows through a concrete theoretical experiment that the prediction by standard complex quantum theory cannot be expressed by its real counterpart and ratifies its ...