In 16th century Venice, formulae for solving equations were closely guarded intellectual property. Of particular interest to ballistics and fortifications expert Niccolo Tartaglia were quadratic and ...

Lorraine Boissoneault | Author, Body Weather: Notes on Chronic Illness in the Anthropocene "Numbers are a human invention, and they’re not something we get automatically from nature," says Caleb ...

Do you ever seem to see repeating sequences of numbers over and over again, like 222 or 333? Or have you heard that seeing 11:11 on the clock is a lucky sign to make a wish? It definitely feels like a ...

In the early 1970s mathematician Donald Knuth spent a sabbatical with his wife in Norway. The time was meant to be spent relaxing. Yet one night he woke up his partner in a state of agitation. He ...

Spreadsheets created in Apple Numbers can be wondrous things, but opening them in Excel on a Windows PC is something of a headache. It can be done, though, with a little help from iCloud. In this ...

There are many different types of numbers, some of which you may remember from school: natural, rational, irrational, imaginary, calculable and incalculable numbers. Today, however, we are going to ...

Numbers do not exist in all cultures. There are numberless hunter-gatherers embedded deep in Amazonia, living along branches of the world’s largest river tree. Instead of using words for precise ...