Now, on to the subject of complex numbers. We have stayed away from this subject until now simply because we did not want to confuse things. Initially, it is easy to think of signals as “real valued.” ...

Have you ever sat in a math classroom and wondered, “When will I ever use this?” You might have asked yourself this question when you first encountered “imaginary” numbers, and with good reason: What ...

In spite of their name, “imaginary” numbers are as real as any other numbers, especially when it comes to hunting for lost treasure. For our first Insights puzzle of 2019, let’s go on a treasure hunt.

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 ...

Complex numbers seem to have an almost mystical aura surrounding them. Perhaps it’s because of the terminology used for them – for example, they have a ‘real part’ and an ‘imaginary part’, and they ...