Originally defined as the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, pi — written as the Greek letter π — appears throughout mathematics, including in areas that are completely ...

The ancient scholar Hippasus of Metapontum was punished with death for his discovery of irrational numbers—or at least that’s the legend. What actually happened in the fifth century B.C.E. is far from ...

A U.S. computer storage company has calculated the irrational number pi to 105 trillion digits, breaking the previous world record. The calculations took 75 days to complete and used up 1 million ...

What is the most bizarre real number that you can imagine? Probably many people think of an irrational number such as pi (π) or Euler’s number. And indeed, such values can be considered “wild.” After ...

The ancient Greeks wanted to believe that the universe could be described in its entirety using only whole numbers and the ratios between them — fractions, or what we now call rational numbers. But ...

In 1886 the mathematician Leopold Kronecker famously said, “God Himself made the whole numbers — everything else is the work of men.” Indeed, mathematicians have introduced new sets of numbers besides ...