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 ...

MARCUS DU SAUTOY:'At the heart of the mathematical world lie numbers 'They give us the power to describe, 'measure and count everything in the universe. MARCUS DU SAUTOY:'But numbers aren't always ...

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 ...

KARACHI: Children lined the stage, making fists like they were ready for a fight. With goofy smiles on their faces, they looked on to their parents in the audience as the teacher read a series of ...