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.” ...

Imaginary numbers might seem like unicorns and goblins — interesting but irrelevant to reality. But for describing matter at its roots, imaginary numbers turn out to be essential. They seem to be ...

Robyn Arianrhod does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. An imaginary number is a number that, when squared, has a negative result. Essentially, an ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Sometimes mathematicians try to tackle a problem head on, and sometimes they come at it sideways. That’s especially true when the ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. In the early 2010s, an experiment asked 21 four-year-old children to look at a screen and select one of two ...

South African ten-year-old Sibahle Zwane is a maths whizz who has gained fame on social media by doing incredible arithmetic challenges. He first gained fame when he was filmed answering complex maths ...