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 ...

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 ...

Excerpted from "The Grapes of Math: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life." Numbers were invented to describe precise amounts: three teeth, seven days, twelve goats. When quantities are ...