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 ...

Two young mathematicians are illuminating a frontier in the study of rational solutions to polynomial equations: the cubics. According to one version of the story, Hippasus made this discovery at sea, ...

Mathematics is full of weird number systems that most people have never heard of and would have trouble even conceptualizing. But rational numbers are familiar. They’re the counting numbers and the ...