Imagine a horizontal line. The very left is marked one thousand and the very right is marked one billion. On this line, where would you add a marker to represent one million? If you said somewhere in ...

When you move beyond trillions, there are some extremely mind-bending numbers, says Richard Fisher. Some of them are too large to fit in the mind – or even within the known Universe. What's the ...

Mathematicians were disturbed, centuries ago, to find that calculating the properties of certain curves demanded the seemingly impossible: numbers that, when multiplied by themselves, turn negative.

If you've got the time, we've got the riddle. And it's time for a riddle about time: How many numbers are on a clock? It begins with the simplest of questions that, nevertheless, has no simple answer.

Everyone wants to win the lottery. Keep an eye out for these common lottery numbers if you want to up your chances of hitting it big. The chances of winning the lottery are about one in 300 million, ...

Investopedia contributors come from a range of backgrounds, and over 25 years there have been thousands of expert writers and editors who have contributed. Dr. JeFreda R. Brown is a financial ...

Imaginary numbers might seem like unicorns and goblins — interesting but irrelevant to reality. But for describing matter at its roots, imaginary numbers turn out to be essential. They seem to be ...

The p-adics form an infinite collection of number systems based on prime numbers. They’re at the heart of modern number theory. The rational numbers are the most familiar numbers: 1, -5, ½, and every ...

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 ...

Whenever you look at a clock, do you always see the same time? It might be 11:11 or 3:33. Maybe repeating numbers have made their way into other aspects of your life, such as a receipt that totaled ...