Our February Insights puzzle sent readers on a treasure hunt based on complex numbers. First we provided a bit of a primer, demonstrating that complex numbers (expressions of the form a + bi, where ...

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.

Imaginary numbers are necessary to accurately describe reality, two new studies have suggested. Imaginary numbers are what you get when you take the square root of a negative number, and they have ...

If standard quantum theory holds up, imaginary numbers are critical. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Imaginary numbers are ...