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 ...

Why do irrational numbers exist? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Alon Amit, PhD ...

Real numbers are, in fact, pretty much any number that you can think of. This can include whole numbers or integers, fractions, rational numbers and irrational numbers. Real numbers can be positive or ...

It has been assumed, on historical and psychological grounds, that the concept of irrational numbers faces two major intuitive obstacles: a) the difficulty to accept that two magnitudes (two line ...