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Number



 
 
A number is a mathematical object
Mathematical object

In mathematics and its philosophy of mathematics, a mathematical object is an abstract object arising in mathematics. Commonly encountered mathematical objects include numbers, permutations, Partition of a set, matrix , set , function , and relation ....
 used in counting
Counting

Counting is the mathematics action of repeatedly adding one, usually to find out how many objects there are or to set aside a desired number of objects , or for well-ordered objects, to find the ordinal number of a particular object, or to find the object with a particular ordinal number....
 and measuring
Measurement

Measurement is the process of assigning a number to an attribute according to a rule or set of rules. The term can also be used to refer to the result obtained after performing the process....
. A notational symbol which represents a number is called a numeral
Numeral system

A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numerals , and a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....
, but in common usage the word number is used for both the abstract object and the symbol, as well as for the word for the number. In addition to their use in counting and measuring, numerals are often used for labels (telephone number
Telephone number

A telephone number or phone number is a sequence of numbers used to call from one telephone line to another in a telephone network. When telephone numbers were invented, they were short - as few as two or three digits - and were used by people to call a few neighbors....
s), for ordering (serial number
Serial number

A serial number is a unique number assigned for identification which varies from its successor or predecessor by a fixed discrete integer value....
s), and for codes (ISBNs). In mathematics
Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, change, and related topics of pattern and form. Mathematicians seek out patterns whether found in numbers, space, natural science, computers, imaginary abstractions, or elsewhere....
, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero
0 (number)

0 is both a number and the numerical digit used to represent that number in numeral system. It plays a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures....
, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers.

Certain procedures which input one or more numbers and output a number are called numerical operations
Operation (mathematics)

In its simplest meaning in mathematics and logic, an operation is an action or procedure which produces a new value from one or more input values....
.






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A number is a mathematical object
Mathematical object

In mathematics and its philosophy of mathematics, a mathematical object is an abstract object arising in mathematics. Commonly encountered mathematical objects include numbers, permutations, Partition of a set, matrix , set , function , and relation ....
 used in counting
Counting

Counting is the mathematics action of repeatedly adding one, usually to find out how many objects there are or to set aside a desired number of objects , or for well-ordered objects, to find the ordinal number of a particular object, or to find the object with a particular ordinal number....
 and measuring
Measurement

Measurement is the process of assigning a number to an attribute according to a rule or set of rules. The term can also be used to refer to the result obtained after performing the process....
. A notational symbol which represents a number is called a numeral
Numeral system

A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numerals , and a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....
, but in common usage the word number is used for both the abstract object and the symbol, as well as for the word for the number. In addition to their use in counting and measuring, numerals are often used for labels (telephone number
Telephone number

A telephone number or phone number is a sequence of numbers used to call from one telephone line to another in a telephone network. When telephone numbers were invented, they were short - as few as two or three digits - and were used by people to call a few neighbors....
s), for ordering (serial number
Serial number

A serial number is a unique number assigned for identification which varies from its successor or predecessor by a fixed discrete integer value....
s), and for codes (ISBNs). In mathematics
Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, change, and related topics of pattern and form. Mathematicians seek out patterns whether found in numbers, space, natural science, computers, imaginary abstractions, or elsewhere....
, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero
0 (number)

0 is both a number and the numerical digit used to represent that number in numeral system. It plays a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures....
, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers.

Certain procedures which input one or more numbers and output a number are called numerical operations
Operation (mathematics)

In its simplest meaning in mathematics and logic, an operation is an action or procedure which produces a new value from one or more input values....
. Unary operations input a single number and output a single number. For example, the successor operation adds one to an integer: the successor of 4 is 5. More common are binary operations which input two numbers and output a single number. Examples of binary operations include addition
Addition

Addition is the mathematics process of putting things together. The plus sign "+" means that numbers are added together. For example, in the picture on the right, there are 3 + 2 apples?meaning three apples and two other apples?which is the same as five apples, since 3 + 2 = 5....
, subtraction
Subtraction

Subtraction is one of the four basic arithmetic operations; it is the inverse of addition, meaning that if we start with any number and add any number and then subtract the same number we added, we return to the number we started with....
, multiplication
Multiplication

Multiplication is the Operation of scaling one number by another. It is one of the four basic operations in elementary arithmetic .Multiplication is defined for Natural number in terms of repeated addition; for example, 4 multiplied by 3 can be calculated by adding 3 copies of 4 together:...
, division
Division (mathematics)

In mathematics, especially in elementary arithmetic, division is an arithmetic operation which is the inverse of multiplication.Specifically, if c times b equals a, written:...
, and exponentiation
Exponentiation

Exponentiation is a mathematics operation , written 'an', involving two numbers, the base a and the exponent n....
. The study of numerical operations is called arithmetic
Arithmetic

Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations....
.

The branch of mathematics
Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, change, and related topics of pattern and form. Mathematicians seek out patterns whether found in numbers, space, natural science, computers, imaginary abstractions, or elsewhere....
 that studies structure in number systems, topics such as groups
Group (mathematics)

In mathematics, a group is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with an Binary operation that combines any two of its element to form a third element....
, rings and fields
Field (mathematics)

In abstract algebra, a field is an algebraic structure with notions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division , satisfying certain axioms....
, is called abstract algebra
Abstract algebra

Abstract algebra is the subject area of mathematics that studies algebraic structures, such as group , ring , field , module , vector spaces, and algebra over a field....
.

Types of numbers

Numbers can be classified into sets, called number system
Number system

In mathematics, a number system is a Set of numbers, , together with one or more operations, such as addition or multiplication.Examples of number systems include: natural numbers, integers, rational numbers, algebraic numbers, real numbers, complex numbers, p-adic numbers, surreal numbers, and hyperreal numbers....
s. (For different methods of expressing numbers with symbols, such as the Roman numerals
Roman numerals

Roman numerals are a numeral system of ancient Rome based on letters of the alphabet, which are combined to signify the sum of their values. The system is decimal but not directly Positional notation and does not include a zero....
, see numeral system
Numeral system

A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numerals , and a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....
s.)

Natural numbers

The most familiar numbers are the natural number
Natural number

In mathematics, a natural number can mean either an element of the Set = *n = = ? = ? ...
s
or counting numbers: one, two, three, ... .

In the base ten number system, in almost universal use today for arithmetic operations, the symbols for natural numbers are written using ten digits
Numerical digit

In mathematics and computer science, a digit is a symbol used in numerals , to represent numbers, in Positional notation numeral systems. The name "digit" comes from the fact that the 10 digits of the hands correspond to the 10 symbols of the common base 10 number system, i.e....
: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. In this base ten system, the rightmost digit of a natural number has a place value of one, and every other digit has a place value ten times that of the place value of the digit to its right. The symbol for the set of all natural numbers is N, also written .
Blackboard bold

Blackboard bold is a typeface style often used for certain symbols in mathematics and physics texts, in which certain lines of the symbol are doubled....


In set theory
Set theory

Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies Set , which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics....
, which is capable of acting as an axiomatic foundation for modern mathematics, natural numbers can be represented by classes of equivalent sets. For instance, the number 3 can be represented as the class of all sets that have exactly three elements. Alternatively, in Peano Arithmetic, the number 3 is represented as sss0, where s is the "successor" function. Many different representations are possible; all that is needed to formally represent 3 is to inscribe a certain symbol or pattern of symbols 3 times.

Integers

Negative numbers are numbers that are less than zero. They are the opposite of positive numbers. For example, if a positive number indicates a bank deposit, then a negative number indicates a withdrawal of the same amount. Negative numbers are usually written by writing a negative sign (also called a minus sign) in front of the number they are the opposite of. Thus the opposite of 7 is written -7. When the set of negative numbers is combined with the natural numbers and zero, the result is the set of integer numbers, also called integer
Integer

The integers are natural numbers including 0 and their negative and non-negative numberss . They are numbers that can be written without a fractional or decimal component, and fall within the set ....
s
, Z (German Zahl, plural Zahlen), also written .
Blackboard bold

Blackboard bold is a typeface style often used for certain symbols in mathematics and physics texts, in which certain lines of the symbol are doubled....


Rational numbers

A rational number
Rational number

In mathematics, a rational number is a number which can be expressed as a quotient of two integers. Non-integer rational numbers are usually written as the vulgar fraction , where b is not 0 ....
 is a number that can be expressed as a fraction
Fraction (mathematics)

A fraction is a number that can represent part of a whole.The earliest fractions were reciprocals of integers, symbols representing one half, one third, one quarter, and so on....
 with an integer numerator
Numerator

Numerator may refer to:* A numeral used to indicate a count, particularly of the equal parts in a fraction . A numerator is the number on top of the fraction....
 and a non-zero natural number denominator. The fraction m/n or represents m equal parts, where n equal parts of that size make up one whole. Two different fractions may correspond to the same rational number; for example 1/2 and 2/4 are equal, that is:
If the absolute value
Absolute value

In mathematics, the absolute value of a real number is its numerical value without regard to its Negative and non-negative numbers. So, for example, 3 is the absolute value of both 3 and -3....
 of m is greater than n, then the absolute value of the fraction is greater than 1. Fractions can be greater than, less than, or equal to 1 and can also be positive, negative, or zero. The set of all rational numbers includes the integers, since every integer can be written as a fraction with denominator 1. For example -7 can be written -7/1. The symbol for the rational numbers is Q (for quotient
Quotient

In mathematics, a quotient is the result of a division . For example, when dividing 6 by 3, the quotient is 2, while 6 is called the division , and 3 the divisor....
), also written .
Blackboard bold

Blackboard bold is a typeface style often used for certain symbols in mathematics and physics texts, in which certain lines of the symbol are doubled....


Real numbers

The real numbers include all of the measuring numbers. Real numbers are usually written using decimal
Decimal

The decimal numeral system has 10 as its Base . It is the most widely used numeral system....
 numerals, in which a decimal point is placed to the right of the digit with place value one. Each digit to the right of the decimal point has a place value one-tenth of the place value of the digit to its left. Thus represents 1 hundred, 2 tens, 3 ones, 4 tenths, 5 hundredths, and 6 thousandths. In saying the number, the decimal is read "point", thus: "one two three point four five six ". In the US and UK and a number of other countries, the decimal point is represented by a period
Full stop

A full stop or period , is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of Sentence s in English language and many other languages....
, whereas in continental Europe and certain other countries the decimal point is represented by a comma
Comma (punctuation)

The comma is a punctuation mark. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline of the text....
. Zero is often written as 0.0 when necessary to indicate that it is to be treated as a real number rather than as an integer. Negative real numbers are written with a preceding minus sign:

Every rational number is also a real number. To write a fraction as a decimal, divide the numerator by the denominator. It is not the case, however, that every real number is rational. If a real number cannot be written as a fraction of two integers, it is called irrational
Irrational number

In mathematics, an irrational number is any real number that is not a rational number ? that is, it is a number which cannot be expressed as a fraction m/n, where m and n are integers, with n non-zero....
. A decimal that can be written as a fraction either ends (terminates) or forever repeats
Repeating decimal

A decimal representation of a real number is called a repeating decimal if at some point it becomes periodicity: there is some finite sequence of digits that is repeated indefinitely....
, because it is the answer to a problem in division. Thus the real number 0.5 can be written as 1/2 and the real number 0.333... (forever repeating threes) can be written as 1/3. On the other hand, the real number p (pi
Pi

Pi or p is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle's area to the square of its radius....
), the ratio of the circumference
Circumference

The circumference is the distance around a closed curve. Circumference is a kind of perimeter....
 of any circle to its diameter
Diameter

In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints are on the circle....
, is Since the decimal neither ends nor forever repeats, it cannot be written as a fraction, and is an example of an irrational number. Other irrational numbers include (the square root of 2
Square root of 2

The square root of 2, also known as Pythagoras' constant,is the positive real number that, when multiplied by itself, gives the number 2 ....
, that is, the positive number whose square is 2).

Thus 1.0 and 0.999...
0.999...

In mathematics, the repeating decimal 0.999? which may also be written as or denotes a real number equality to 1 . In other words: the notations 0.999? and 1 actually represent the same real number....
 are two different decimal numerals representing the natural number 1. There are infinitely many other ways of representing the number 1, for example 2/2, 3/3, 1.00, 1.000, and so on.

Every real number is either rational or irrational. Every real number corresponds to a point on the number line
Number line

In mathematics, a number line is a picture of a straight line on which every point corresponds to a real number and every real number to a point....
. The real numbers also have an important but highly technical property called the least upper bound property. The symbol for the real numbers is R or .

When a real number represents a measurement
Measurement

Measurement is the process of assigning a number to an attribute according to a rule or set of rules. The term can also be used to refer to the result obtained after performing the process....
, there is always a margin of error
Margin of error

The margin of error is a statistic expressing the amount of random sampling error in a statistical survey's results. The larger the margin of error, the less faith one should have that the poll's reported results are close to the "true" figures; that is, the figures for the whole Statistical population....
. This is often indicated by rounding
Rounding

Rounding involves reducing the number of significant digits in a number. The result of rounding is a "shorter" number having fewer non-zero digits yet similar in magnitude....
 or truncating a decimal, so that digits that suggest a greater accuracy than the measurement itself are removed. The remaining digits are called significant digits. For example, measurements with a ruler can seldom be made without a margin of error of at least 0.01 meters. If the sides of a rectangle
Rectangle

In geometry, a rectangle is a Closed set planar quadrilateral with four right angles. A rectangle with vertices ABCD would be denoted as .A rectangle with adjacent sides of lengths a and b has area ab and diagonals of equal length ....
 are measured as 1.23 meters and 4.56 meters, then multiplication gives an area for the rectangle of 5.6088 square meters. Since only the first two digits after the decimal place are significant, this is usually rounded to 5.61.

In abstract algebra
Abstract algebra

Abstract algebra is the subject area of mathematics that studies algebraic structures, such as group , ring , field , module , vector spaces, and algebra over a field....
, the real numbers are up to isomorphism uniquely characterized by being the only complete
Completeness (order theory)

In the mathematics area of order theory, completeness properties assert the existence of certain infimum or supremum of a given partially ordered set ....
 ordered field
Ordered field

In mathematics, an ordered field is a field together with a total ordering of its elements that agrees in a certain sense with the field operations....
. They are not, however, an algebraically closed field
Algebraically closed field

In mathematics, a field F is said to be algebraically closed if every polynomial in one variable of degree at least 1, with coefficients in F, has a root in F....
.

Complex numbers

Moving to a greater level of abstraction, the real numbers can be extended to the complex number
Complex number

In mathematics, the complex numbers are an extension of the real numbers obtained by adjoining an imaginary unit, denoted i, which satisfies:...
s
. This set of numbers arose, historically, from the question of whether a negative number can have a square root
Square root

In mathematics, a square root of a number x is a number r such that r2 = x, or, in other words, a number r whose square is x....
. This led to the invention of a new number: the square root of negative one, denoted by i
Imaginary unit

In mathematics, physics, and engineering, the imaginary unit is denoted by  or the Latin   or the Greek iota . It allows the real number system, to be extended to the complex number system,   Its precise definition is dependent upon the particular method of extension....
, a symbol assigned by Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler

Leonhard Paul Euler was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist who spent most of his life in Russia and Germany.Euler made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus and graph theory....
, and called the imaginary unit
Imaginary unit

In mathematics, physics, and engineering, the imaginary unit is denoted by  or the Latin   or the Greek iota . It allows the real number system, to be extended to the complex number system,   Its precise definition is dependent upon the particular method of extension....
. The complex numbers consist of all numbers of the form where a and b are real numbers. In the expression a + bi, the real number a is called the real part and bi is called the imaginary part. If the real part of a complex number is zero, then the number is called an imaginary number
Imaginary number

In mathematics, an imaginary number is a complex number whose square value is a real number not greater than zero. The imaginary unit, denoted by i or j, is an example of an imaginary number....
 or is referred to as purely imaginary; if the imaginary part is zero, then the number is a real number. Thus the real numbers are a subset
Subset

In mathematics, especially in set theory, a Set A is a subset of a set B if A is "contained" inside B. Notice that A and B may coincide....
 of the complex numbers. If the real and imaginary parts of a complex number are both integers, then the number is called a Gaussian integer
Gaussian integer

A Gaussian integer is a complex number whose real and imaginary part are both integers. The Gaussian integers, with ordinary addition and multiplication of complex numbers, form an integral domain, usually written as Z[i]....
. The symbol for the complex numbers is C or .

In abstract algebra
Abstract algebra

Abstract algebra is the subject area of mathematics that studies algebraic structures, such as group , ring , field , module , vector spaces, and algebra over a field....
, the complex numbers are an example of an algebraically closed field
Algebraically closed field

In mathematics, a field F is said to be algebraically closed if every polynomial in one variable of degree at least 1, with coefficients in F, has a root in F....
, meaning that every polynomial
Polynomial

In mathematics, a polynomial is an expression constructed from variables and constants, using the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and constant non-negative whole number exponents....
 with complex coefficient
Coefficient

In mathematics, a coefficient is a constant multiplication factor of a certain object. For example, in the expression 9x2, the coefficient of x2 is 9....
s can be factored
Factorization

In mathematics, factorization or factoring is the decomposition of an object into a product of other objects, or factors, which when multiplication together give the original....
 into linear factors. Like the real number system, the complex number system is a field
Field (mathematics)

In abstract algebra, a field is an algebraic structure with notions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division , satisfying certain axioms....
 and is complete
Completeness (order theory)

In the mathematics area of order theory, completeness properties assert the existence of certain infimum or supremum of a given partially ordered set ....
, but unlike the real numbers it is not ordered
Total order

In mathematics and set theory, a total order, linear order, simple order, or ordering is a binary relation on some Set X....
. That is, there is no meaning in saying that i is greater than 1, nor is there any meaning in saying that that i is less than 1. In technical terms, the complex numbers lack the trichotomy property.

Complex numbers correspond to points on the complex plane
Complex plane

In mathematics, the complex plane is a geometric representation of the complex numbersestablished by the real axis and the orthogonal imaginary axis....
, sometimes called the Argand plane.

Each of the number systems mentioned above is a proper subset of the next number system. Symbolically, N ? Z ? Q ? R ? C.

Computable numbers


Moving to problems of computation, the computable number
Computable number

In mathematics, theoretical computer science and mathematical logic, the computable numbers, also known as the recursive numbers or the computable reals, are the real numbers that can be computed to within any desired precision by a finite, terminating algorithm....
s
are determined in the set of the real numbers. The computable numbers, also known as the recursive numbers or the computable reals, are the real numbers that can be computed to within any desired precision by a finite, terminating algorithm
Algorithm

In mathematics, computing, linguistics and related subjects, an algorithm is a sequence of finite instructions, often used for calculation and data processing....
. Equivalent definitions can be given using µ-recursive functions
Mu-recursive function

In mathematical logic and computer science, the ?-recursive functions are a class of partial functions from natural numbers to natural numbers which are "computable" in an intuitive sense....
, Turing machines or ?-calculus as the formal representation of algorithms. The computable numbers form a real closed field
Real closed field

In mathematics, a real closed field is a Field F that has the same first-order properties as the field of real numbers. Some examples are the field of real numbers, the field of real algebraic numbers, and the field of hyperreal numbers....
 and can be used in the place of real numbers for many, but not all, mathematical purposes.

Other types


Hyperreal
Hyperreal number

The system of hyperreal numbers represents a rigorous method of treating the ideas about infinite and infinitesimal numbers that had been used casually by mathematicians, scientists, and engineers ever since the invention of calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz....
 and hypercomplex numbers are used in non-standard analysis
Non-standard analysis

Non-standard analysis is a branch of mathematics that formulates mathematical analysis using a rigorous notion of an infinitesimal number.Non-standard analysis was introduced in the early 1960s by the mathematician Abraham Robinson....
. The hyperreals, or nonstandard reals (usually denoted as *R), denote an ordered field
Ordered field

In mathematics, an ordered field is a field together with a total ordering of its elements that agrees in a certain sense with the field operations....
 which is a proper extension
Field extension

In mathematics, more specifically in abstract algebra, field extensions are the main object of study in field theory . The general idea is to start with a base field and construct in some manner a larger field which contains the base field and satisfies additional properties....
 of the ordered field of real number
Real number

In mathematics, the real numbers may be described informally in several different ways. The real numbers include both rational numbers, such as 42 and −23/129, and irrational numbers, such as pi and the square root of two; or, a real number can be given by an infinite decimal representation, such as 2.4871773339...., where the digits co...
s R and which satisfies the transfer principle
Transfer principle

In model theory, a transfer principle states that all statements of some language that are true for some structure, are true for another structure....
. This principle allows true first order
First-order logic

First-order logic is a formal deductive system used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. It goes by many names, including: first-order predicate calculus , the lower predicate calculus, the language of first-order logic or predicate logic....
 statements about R to be reinterpreted as true first order statements about *R.

Superreal
Superreal number

The superreal numbers are an extension of the real numbers, similar to the surreal numbers or hyperreal numbers, but comprising a more inclusive category than either one....
 and surreal number
Surreal number

In mathematics, the surreal number system is an continuum containing the real number as well as infinite and infinitesimal, respectively larger or smaller in absolute value than any positive real number....
s extend the real numbers by adding infinitesimally small numbers and infinitely large numbers, but still form fields
Field (mathematics)

In abstract algebra, a field is an algebraic structure with notions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division , satisfying certain axioms....
.

The idea behind p-adic number
P-adic number

In mathematics, the p-adic number systems were first described by Kurt Hensel in 1897. For each prime number p, the p-adic number system extends the ordinary arithmetic of the rational numbers in a way different from the extension of the rational number system to the real number and complex number systems....
s is this: While real numbers may have infinitely long expansions to the right of the decimal point, these numbers allow for infinitely long expansions to the left. The number system which results depends on what base
Radix

In numeral system, the base or radix is usually the number of unique Numerical digit, including zero, that a Positional notation numeral system uses to represent numbers....
 is used for the digits: any base is possible, but a system with the best mathematical properties is obtained when the base is a prime number
Prime number

In mathematics, a prime number is a natural number which has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: 1 and itself. An infinitude of prime numbers exists, as demonstrated by Euclid around 300 BC....
.

For dealing with infinite collections, the natural numbers have been generalized to the ordinal number
Ordinal number

In set theory, an ordinal number, or just ordinal, is the order type of a well-order. They are usually identified with hereditarily transitive sets....
s and to the cardinal number
Cardinal number

In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality of Set ....
s. The former gives the ordering of the collection, while the latter gives its size. For the finite set, the ordinal and cardinal numbers are equivalent, but they differ in the infinite case.

There are also other sets of numbers with specialized uses. Some are subsets of the complex numbers. For example, algebraic numbers are the roots of polynomials with rational coefficients. Complex numbers that are not algebraic are called transcendental numbers.

Sets of numbers that are not subsets of the complex numbers are sometimes called hypercomplex number
Hypercomplex number

The term hypercomplex number has been used in mathematics for the elements of algebras that extend or go beyond complex number arithmetic.Hypercomplex numbers have had a long lineage of devotees including Hermann Hankel, Georg Frobenius, Eduard Study, and ?lie Cartan....
s. They include the quaternion
Quaternion

Quaternions, in mathematics, are a non-commutative number system that extends the complex numbers. The quaternions were first described by Irish mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space....
s H, invented by Sir William Rowan Hamilton
William Rowan Hamilton

Sir William Rowan Hamilton was an Ireland physicist, astronomer, and mathematician, who made important contributions to classical mechanics, optics, and algebra....
, in which multiplication is not commutative, and the octonion
Octonion

In mathematics, the octonions are a associative extension of the quaternions. Their 8-dimensional normed division algebra over the real numbers is the widest possible that can be obtained from the Cayley-Dickson construction....
s, in which multiplication is not associative. Elements of function fields
Function field of an algebraic variety

In algebraic geometry, the function field of an algebraic variety V consists of objects which are interpreted as rational functions on V....
 of non-zero characteristic
Characteristic (algebra)

In mathematics, the characteristic of a ring R, often denoted char, is defined to be the smallest number of times one must add the ring's multiplicative identity element to itself to get the additive identity element ; the ring is said to have characteristic zero if this repeated sum never reaches the additive identity....
 behave in some ways like numbers and are often regarded as numbers by number theorists.

In addition, various specific kinds of numbers are studied in sets of natural
Natural number

In mathematics, a natural number can mean either an element of the Set = *n = = ? = ? ...
 and integer numbers.

An even number is an integer that is "evenly divisible" by 2, i.e., divisible by 2 without remainder; an odd number is an integer that is not evenly divisible by 2. (The old-fashioned term "evenly divisible" is now almost always shortened to "divisible".) A formal definition of an odd number is that it is an integer of the form n = 2k + 1, where k is an integer. An even number has the form n = 2k where k is an integer
Integer

The integers are natural numbers including 0 and their negative and non-negative numberss . They are numbers that can be written without a fractional or decimal component, and fall within the set ....
.

A perfect number is defined as a positive integer
Negative and non-negative numbers

A negative number is a real number that is inequality 0 , such as -3. A positive number is a real number that is greater than zero, such as 2....
 which is the sum of its proper positive divisor
Divisor

In mathematics, a divisor of an integer n, also called a factor of n, is an integer which evenly divides n without leaving a remainder....
s, that is, the sum of the positive divisors not including the number itself. Equivalently, a perfect number is a number that is half the sum of all of its positive divisors, or s
Divisor function

In mathematics, and specifically in number theory, a divisor function is an arithmetical function related to the divisors of an integer. When referred to as the divisor function, it counts the number of divisors of an integer....
(n) = 2 n. The first perfect number is 6
6 (number)

6 is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7 .The SI prefix for 10006 is exa , and for its reciprocal atto ....
, because 1, 2, and 3 are its proper positive divisors and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. The next perfect number is 28
28 (number)

28 is the natural number following 27 and preceding 29 ....
 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14. The next perfect numbers are 496
496 (number)

Four hundred [and] ninety-six is the natural number following four hundred [and] ninety-five and preceding four hundred [and] ninety-seven....
 and 8128
8128 (number)

8128 is the natural number following 8127 and preceding 8129.It is most notable for being a perfect number, and one of the earliest numbers to be recognized as such....
 . These first four perfect numbers were the only ones known to early Greek mathematics
Greek mathematics

Greek mathematics, as that term is used in this article, is the mathematics written in Greek language, developed from the 6th century BC to the 5th century AD around the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean....
.

A figurate number is a number that can be represented as a regular and discrete geometric
Geometry

Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers....
 pattern (e.g. dots). If the pattern is polytopic
Polytope

In geometry, polytope is a generic term that can refer to a two-dimensional polygon, a three-dimensional polyhedron, or any of the various generalizations thereof, including generalizations to higher dimensions and other abstractions ....
, the figurate is labeled a polytopic number, and may be a polygonal number
Polygonal number

In mathematics, a polygonal number is a number represented as dots or pebbles arrayed in the shape of a polygon. The dots were thought of as alphas ....
 or a polyhedral number. Polytopic numbers for r = 2, 3, and 4 are:
  • P2(n) = 1/2 n(n + 1) (triangular number
    Triangular number

    A triangular number is the number of dots in an equilateral triangle evenly filled with dots. For example, three dots can be arranged in a triangle; thus three is a triangle number....
    s)
  • P3(n) = 1/6 n(n + 1)(n + 2) (tetrahedral number
    Tetrahedral number

    A tetrahedral number, or triangular pyramidal number, is a figurate number that represents a pyramid with a triangular base and three sides, called a tetrahedron....
    s)
  • P4(n) = 1/24 n(n + 1)(n + 2)(n + 3) (pentatopic numbers)


A relation number is defined as the class
Class

Class may refer to:...
 of relations consisting of all those relations that are similar to one member of the class.

Numerals


Numbers should be distinguished from numerals
Number names

In linguistics, a number name, or numeral, is a word in a natural language that signifi? a number.In history of writing, numerals are symbols representing numeral systems....
, the symbols used to represent numbers. Boyer showed that Egyptians created the first ciphered numeral system. Greeks followed by mapping their counting numbers onto Ionian and Doric alpabets. The number five can be represented by both the base ten numeral '5', by the Roman numeral 'V' and ciphered letters. Notations used to represent numbers are discussed in the article numeral system
Numeral system

A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numerals , and a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....
s. An important development in the history of numerals was the development of a positional system, like modern decimals, which can represent very large numbers. The Roman numerals require extra symbols for larger numbers.

History


History of integers


The first use of numbers
It is speculated that the first known use of numbers dates back to around 30,000 BC. Bones and other artifacts have been discovered with marks cut into them which many consider to be tally marks
Tally marks

Tally marks are an implementation of the unary numeral system. They are a form of numeral used for counting. They allow updating written intermediate results without erasing or discarding anything written down....
. The uses of these tally marks may have been for counting elapsed time, such as numbers of days, or keeping records of quantities, such as of animals.

Tallying systems have no concept of place-value (such as in the currently used decimal notation), which limit its representation of large numbers and as such is often considered that this is the first kind of abstract system that would be used, and could be considered a Numeral System.

The first known system with place-value was the Mesopotamian
Ancient Mesopotamian units of measurement

File:Sumerian_Calendar_ISO_B0.svg?Ancient mesopotamian units of measurement originated in the loosely organized city-states of Early Dynastic Sumer....
 base 60 system (ca. 3400 BC) and the earliest known base 10 system dates to 3100 BC in Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
.

History of zero

The use of zero as a number should be distinguished from its use as a placeholder numeral in place-value systems. Many ancient texts used zero. Babylonians and Egyptian texts used it. Egyptians used the word nfr to denote zero balance in double entry accounting entries. Indian texts used a Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
 word Shunya to refer to the concept of void; in mathematics texts this word would often be used to refer to the number zero. . In a similar vein, Pa?ini
Pa?ini

was an Iron Age India Sanskrit grammarian from Pushkalavati, Gandhara .He is known for his Vyakarana, particularly for his formulation of the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit Morphology in the grammar known as 'Ashtadhyayi' , the foundational text of the grammatical branch of the Vedanga, the auxiliary scholarly disciplines of historical Ved...
 (5th century BC) used the null (zero) operator (ie a lambda production) in the Ashtadhyayi, his algebraic grammar
Formal grammar

In formal language theory, grammars, also called formal grammars or generative grammars, are a formalism used to describe formal languages – i.e....
 for the Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
 language. (also see Pingala
Pingala

Pingala was an Ancient Indian writer, famous for his work, the Chandas Shastra , a Sanskrit treatise on prosody considered one of the Vedanga....
)

Records show that the Ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
 seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number: they asked themselves "how can 'nothing' be something?" leading to interesting philosophical
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
 and, by the Medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum
Vacuum

A vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty," but in reality, no volume of space can ever be perfectly empty....
. The paradoxes
Zeno's paradoxes

Zeno's paradoxes are a set of problems generally thought to have been devised by Zeno of Elea to support Parmenides's doctrine that "all is one" and that, contrary to the evidence of our senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion....
 of Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea

Zeno of Velia was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic....
 depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero. (The ancient Greeks even questioned if 1
1 (number)

1 is a number, number names, and the name of the glyph representing that number.It represents a single entity, the unit of counting or measurement....
 was a number.)

The late Olmec
Olmec

The Olmec were an ancient Pre-Columbian people living in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in what are roughly the modern-day Mexican state of Veracruz and Tabasco....
 people of south-central Mexico
Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federalism constitutionalism republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico....
 began to use a true zero (a shell glyph) in the New World possibly by the 4th century BC but certainly by 40 BC, which became an integral part of Maya numerals and the Maya calendar. Mayan arithmetic used base 4 and base 5 written as base 20. Sanchez in 1961 reported a base 4, base 5 'finger' abacus.

By 130, Ptolemy
Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman Greek mathematics, Greek astronomy, geographer and astrologer. He lived in History of Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria around 168 AD....
, influenced by Hipparchus
Hipparchus

Hipparchus, the common Latinization of the Greek Hipparkhos, can mean:* Hipparchus, the ancient Greek astronomer** Hipparchic cycle, an astronomical cycle he created...
 and the Babylonians, was using a symbol for zero (a small circle with a long overbar) within a sexagesimal numeral system otherwise using alphabetic Greek numerals
Greek numerals

Greek numerals are a numeral system using letters of the Greek alphabet. They are also known by the names Milesian numerals, Alexandrian numerals, or alphabetic numerals....
. Because it was used alone, not as just a placeholder, this Hellenistic zero
Greek numerals

Greek numerals are a numeral system using letters of the Greek alphabet. They are also known by the names Milesian numerals, Alexandrian numerals, or alphabetic numerals....
 was the first documented use of a true zero in the Old World. In later Byzantine
Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
 manuscripts of his Syntaxis Mathematica (Almagest), the Hellenistic zero had morphed into the Greek letter
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
 omicron
Omicron

Omicron is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 70. It is rarely used in mathematics because it is indistinguishable from the Latin alphabet letter O and easily confused with the Numerical digit 0 ....
 (otherwise meaning 70).

Another true zero was used in tables alongside Roman numerals
Roman numerals

Roman numerals are a numeral system of ancient Rome based on letters of the alphabet, which are combined to signify the sum of their values. The system is decimal but not directly Positional notation and does not include a zero....
 by 525 (first known use by Dionysius Exiguus
Dionysius Exiguus

Dionysius Exiguus was a sixth century monk born in Scythia Minor, in what is now the territory of Dobruja, Romania, and a member of the so called "Scythian monks" community....
), but as a word, nulla meaning nothing, not as a symbol. When division produced zero as a remainder, nihil, also meaning nothing, was used. These medieval zeros were used by all future medieval computists
Computus

Computus is the calculation of the date of Easter in the Christian calendar. The name has been used for this procedure since the early Middle Ages, as it was one of the most important computations of the age....
 (calculators of Easter
Easter

Easter is the most important religious feast in the Christianity liturgical year.Christians believe that Jesus was Resurrection of Jesus from the dead three days after his Crucifixion of Jesus, and celebrate this resurrection on Easter Day or Easter Sunday , two days after Good Friday....
). An isolated use of their initial, N, was used in a table of Roman numerals by Bede
Bede

Bede , , was a monasticism at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria....
 or a colleague about 725, a true zero symbol.

An early documented use of the zero by Brahmagupta
Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta was an Indian Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy....
 (in the Brahmasphutasiddhanta
Brahmasphutasiddhanta

The main work of Brahmagupta, Brahmasphuta-siddhanta , written in the year c.628, contains some remarkably advanced ideas, including a good understanding of the mathematics role of 0 , rules for manipulating both negative and positive numbers, a method for computing square roots, methods of solving linear equation and some quadratic equat...
) dates to 628. He treated zero as a number and discussed operations involving it, including division
Division by zero

In mathematics, a division is called a division by zero if the divisor is 0 . Such a division can be formally expressed as a/0 where a is the dividend....
. By this time (7th century) the concept had clearly reached Cambodia
Khmer numerals

File:Khmer Numerals - 605 from the Sambor inscriptions.jpgKhmer numerals are characters used for writing numbers for several languages in Cambodia, most notably Cambodia's official language, Khmer language....
, and documentation shows the idea later spreading to China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
 and the Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
ic world.

History of negative numbers

The abstract concept of negative numbers was recognised as early as 100 BC - 50 BC. The Chinese
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
 ”Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art” (Jiu-zhang Suanshu) contains methods for finding the areas of figures; red rods were used to denote positive coefficient
Coefficient

In mathematics, a coefficient is a constant multiplication factor of a certain object. For example, in the expression 9x2, the coefficient of x2 is 9....
s, black for negative. This is the earliest known mention of negative numbers in the East; the first reference in a western work was in the 3rd century in Greece
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
. Diophantus
Diophantus

Diophantus of Alexandria , sometimes called "the father of algebra", a title some claim should be shared by a Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi, born some 500 years after Diophantus....
 referred to the equation equivalent to (the solution would be negative) in Arithmetica
Arithmetica

Arithmetica is an ancient Greek language text on mathematics written by the mathematician Diophantus in the 3rd century CE. It is a collection of 130 algebra problems giving numerical solutions of determinate equations , and indeterminate equations....
, saying that the equation gave an absurd result.

During the 600s, negative numbers were in use in India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
 to represent debts. Diophantus
Diophantus

Diophantus of Alexandria , sometimes called "the father of algebra", a title some claim should be shared by a Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi, born some 500 years after Diophantus....
’ previous reference was discussed more explicitly by Indian mathematician Brahmagupta
Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta was an Indian Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy....
, in Brahma-Sphuta-Siddhanta
Brahmasphutasiddhanta

The main work of Brahmagupta, Brahmasphuta-siddhanta , written in the year c.628, contains some remarkably advanced ideas, including a good understanding of the mathematics role of 0 , rules for manipulating both negative and positive numbers, a method for computing square roots, methods of solving linear equation and some quadratic equat...
 628, who used negative numbers to produce the general form quadratic formula
Quadratic equation

In mathematics, a quadratic equation is a polynomial equation of the second degree of a polynomial. The general form iswhere a ? 0. The letters a, b, and c are called coefficients: the quadratic coefficient a is the coefficient of x2, the linear coefficient b is the coefficient of x, and c i...
 that remains in use today. However, in the 12th century in India, Bhaskara
Bhaskara

Bhaskara was an Indian Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. He was born near Bijjada Bida into the Deshastha Brahmin family. Bhaskara was head of an astronomy observatory at Ujjain, the leading mathematical centre of ancient India....
 gives negative roots for quadratic equations but says the negative value "is in this case not to be taken, for it is inadequate; people do not approve of negative roots."

Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
an mathematicians, for the most part, resisted the concept of negative numbers until the 17th century, although Fibonacci allowed negative solutions in financial problems where they could be interpreted as debits (chapter 13 of Liber Abaci
Liber Abaci

Liber Abaci is a historic book on arithmetic by Leonardo of Pisa, known later by his nickname Fibonacci. Its title has two common translations, The Book of the Abacus or The Book of Calculation....
, 1202) and later as losses (in Flos). At the same time, the Chinese
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
 were indicating negative numbers by drawing a diagonal stroke through the right-most nonzero digit of the corresponding positive number's numeral. The first use of negative numbers in a European work was by Chuquet during the 15th century. He used them as exponents, but referred to them as “absurd numbers”.

As recently as the 18th century, the Swiss
Switzerland

Switzerland is a landlocked Swiss Alps country of roughly 7.7 million people in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km?. Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states called Cantons of Switzerland....
 mathematician Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler

Leonhard Paul Euler was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist who spent most of his life in Russia and Germany.Euler made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus and graph theory....
 believed that negative numbers were greater than infinity
Infinity

Infinity comes from the Latin infinitas or "unboundedness." It refers to several distinct concepts – usually linked to the idea of "without end" – which arise in philosophy, mathematics, and theology....
, and it was common practice to ignore any negative results returned by equations on the assumption that they were meaningless, just as René Descartes did with negative solutions in a cartesian coordinate system
Cartesian coordinate system

In mathematics, the Cartesian coordinate system is used to determine each Point uniquely in a Plane through two numbers, usually called the x-coordinate or abscissa and the y-coordinate or ordinate of the point....
.

History of rational, irrational, and real numbers


History of rational numbers
It is likely that the concept of fractional numbers dates to prehistoric times. Even the Ancient Egyptians wrote math texts describing how to convert general fractions into their special notation. The RMP 2/n table and the Kahun Papyrus
Kahun Papyrus

The Kahun Papyrus is as an ancient Egyptian text discussing mathematical and medical topics. Its many fragments were discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1889 and are kept at the University College London....
 wrote out unit fraction series by using least common multiples. Classical Greek and Indian mathematicians made studies of the theory of rational numbers, as part of the general study of number theory
Number theory

Number theory is the branch of pure mathematics concerned with the properties of numbers in general, and integers in particular, as well as the wider classes of problems that arise from their study....
. The best known of these is Euclid's Elements
Euclid's Elements

Euclid's Elements is a mathematics and geometry treatise consisting of 13 books written by the Greek mathematics Euclid in Alexandria circa 300 BC....
, dating to roughly 300 BC. Of the Indian texts, the most relevant is the Sthananga Sutra
Sthananga Sutra

IntroductionAs per the Svetambara belief, Sthananga Sutra forms part of the first eleven Angas of the Jaina Canon which have survived despite the bad effects of this Hundavasarpini kala....
, which also covers number theory as part of a general study of mathematics.

The concept of decimal fractions is closely linked with decimal place value notation; the two seem to have developed in tandem. For example, it is common for the Jain math sutras to include calculations of decimal-fraction approximations to pi
Pi

Pi or p is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle's area to the square of its radius....
 or the square root of two. Similarly, Babylonian math texts had always used sexagesimal fractions with great frequency.

History of irrational numbers
The earliest known use of irrational numbers was in the Indian
Indian mathematics

Indian mathematics—which here is the mathematics that emerged in South Asia from ancient times until the end of the 18th century—had its beginnings in the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization and the Iron Age Vedic culture ....
 Sulba Sutras
Sulba Sutras

The Shulba Sutras or Sulbasutras are sutra texts belonging to the Srauta ritual and containing geometry related to fire-altar construction....
 composed between 800-500 BC. The first existence proofs of irrational numbers is usually attributed to Pythagoras
Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionians Ancient Greeks mathematician and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mysticism and scientist; however some have questioned the scope of his contributions to mathematics and natural philosophy....
, more specifically to the Pythagorean
Pythagoreanism

Pythagoreanism is a term used for the esoteric and metaphysics beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans, who were much influenced by mathematics and probably a very inspirational source for Plato and Platonism....
 Hippasus of Metapontum
Hippasus

Hippasus of Metapontum , b. c. 500 B.C. in Magna Graecia, was a Ancient Greece philosopher. He was a disciple of Pythagoras. To Hippasus is attributed the discovery of the existence of irrational numbers....
, who produced a (most likely geometrical) proof of the irrationality of the square root of 2. The story goes that Hippasus discovered irrational numbers when trying to represent the square root of 2 as a fraction. However Pythagoras
Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionians Ancient Greeks mathematician and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mysticism and scientist; however some have questioned the scope of his contributions to mathematics and natural philosophy....
 believed in the absoluteness of numbers, and could not accept the existence of irrational numbers. He could not disprove their existence through logic, but his beliefs would not accept the existence of irrational numbers and so he sentenced Hippasus to death by drowning.

The sixteenth century saw the final acceptance by Europeans of negative
Negative and non-negative numbers

A negative number is a real number that is inequality 0 , such as -3. A positive number is a real number that is greater than zero, such as 2....
, integral and fractional
Fraction (mathematics)

A fraction is a number that can represent part of a whole.The earliest fractions were reciprocals of integers, symbols representing one half, one third, one quarter, and so on....
 numbers. The seventeenth century saw decimal fractions with the modern notation quite generally used by mathematicians. But it was not until the nineteenth century that the irrationals were separated into algebraic and transcendental parts, and a scientific study of theory of irrationals was taken once more. It had remained almost dormant since Euclid
Euclid

Euclid , floruit 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematics and is often referred to as the Father of Geometry. He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I ....
. The year 1872 saw the publication of the theories of Karl Weierstrass
Karl Weierstrass

Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass was a Germany mathematics who is often cited as the "father of modern mathematical analysis"....
 (by his pupil Kossak
Kossak

Kossak is the surname of the 4 generations of notable Poland painters, writers and poets, decending from the History painting Juliusz Kossak. The family includes:...
), Heine
Eduard Heine

Heinrich Eduard Heine was a Germany mathematics.Heine was born in Berlin, and became known for results on special functions and in real analysis....
 (Crelle, 74), Georg Cantor
Georg Cantor

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a Germany mathematician, born in Russia. He is best known as the creator of set theory, which has become a foundations of mathematics in mathematics....
 (Annalen, 5), and Richard Dedekind
Richard Dedekind

Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind was a Germany mathematics who did important work in abstract algebra, algebraic number theory and the foundations of the real numbers....
. Méray had taken in 1869 the same point of departure as Heine
Eduard Heine

Heinrich Eduard Heine was a Germany mathematics.Heine was born in Berlin, and became known for results on special functions and in real analysis....
, but the theory is generally referred to the year 1872. Weierstrass's method has been completely set forth by Salvatore Pincherle
Salvatore Pincherle

Salvatore Pincherle was an Italy mathematician. He contributed significantly to the field of functional analysis, established the Italian Mathematical Union , and was president of the Third International Congress of Mathematicians....
 (1880), and Dedekind's has received additional prominence through the author's later work (1888) and the recent endorsement by Paul Tannery
Paul Tannery

Paul Tannery was a France Mathematics and History of Mathematics. He was labeled by George Sarton as "the scholar who deserves perhaps more than any other to be called the father of our studies [the history of science]"....
 (1894). Weierstrass, Cantor, and Heine base their theories on infinite series, while Dedekind founds his on the idea of a cut (Schnitt)
Dedekind cut

In mathematics, a Dedekind cut, named after Richard Dedekind, in a totally ordered set S is a partition of a set of it into two non-empty parts, , such that A is closed downwards and B is closed upwards, and A contains no greatest element....
 in the system of real number
Real number

In mathematics, the real numbers may be described informally in several different ways. The real numbers include both rational numbers, such as 42 and −23/129, and irrational numbers, such as pi and the square root of two; or, a real number can be given by an infinite decimal representation, such as 2.4871773339...., where the digits co...
s, separating all rational number
Rational number

In mathematics, a rational number is a number which can be expressed as a quotient of two integers. Non-integer rational numbers are usually written as the vulgar fraction , where b is not 0 ....
s into two groups having certain characteristic properties. The subject has received later contributions at the hands of Weierstrass, Kronecker (Crelle, 101), and Méray.

Continued fraction
Continued fraction

In mathematics, a continued fraction is an expression such aswhere a0 is an integer and all the other numbers ai are positive integers....
s, closely related to irrational numbers (and due to Cataldi, 1613), received attention at the hands of Euler, and at the opening of the nineteenth century were brought into prominence through the writings of Joseph Louis Lagrange
Joseph Louis Lagrange

Joseph-Louis Lagrange, born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia was an Italy mathematician and astronomer, who lived most of his life in Prussia and France, making significant contributions to all fields of mathematical analysis, to number theory, and to classical mechanics and celestial mechanics....
. Other noteworthy contributions have been made by Druckenmüller (1837), Kunze
Kunze

Kunz, K?nz, or Kunze is a surname of Germanic origin, and may refer to:*Alfred Kunz, , American murdered Catholic priest.*Andreas Kunz , German skier....
 (1857), Lemke
Lemke

Lemke is a surname, and may refer to* Birsel Lemke* Jay Lemke* Leslie Lemke* Lev Lemke* Mark Lemke* Peter Henry Lemke, Benedictine* Steve Lemke...
 (1870), and Günther
Günther

The Germanic first name G?nther, G?nter, Gunther or Guenther, also Gunthar, refers to various medieval persons, including:...
 (1872). Ramus
Ramus

Ramus can refer to:* A branch* A portion of a bone , as in the Ramus mandibul? or Superior pubic ramus* A nerve ramus such as the Dorsal ramus of spinal nerve...
 (1855) first connected the subject with determinant
Determinant

In algebra, a determinant is a function depending on n that associates a scalar , det, to an n?n square matrix A. The fundamental geometric meaning of a determinant is a scale factor for measure when A is regarded as a linear transformation....
s, resulting, with the subsequent contributions of Heine, Möbius, and Günther
Günther

The Germanic first name G?nther, G?nter, Gunther or Guenther, also Gunthar, refers to various medieval persons, including:...
, in the theory of Kettenbruchdeterminanten. Dirichlet also added to the general theory, as have numerous contributors to the applications of the subject.

Transcendental numbers and reals
The first results concerning transcendental numbers were Lambert's
Johann Heinrich Lambert

Johann Heinrich Lambert , was a Switzerland mathematician, physicist and astronomer.He was born in M?lhausen . His father was a poor tailor, so Johann had to struggle to gain an education....
 1761 proof that p cannot be rational, and also that en is irrational if n is rational (unless n = 0). (The constant e
E (mathematical constant)

The mathematical constant e is the unique real number such that the function ex has the same value as the derivative, for all values of x....
 was first referred to in Napier's
John Napier

John Napier of Merchistoun - also signed as Neper, Nepair - named Marvellous Merchiston, was a Scotland mathematics, physicist, astronomer/astrologer and 8th Laird of Merchistoun, son of Sir Archibald Napier of Merchiston....
 1618 work on logarithms.) Legendre extended this proof to show that p is not the square root of a rational number. The search for roots of quintic
Quintic equation

In mathematics, a quintic equation is a polynomial equation of Degree of a polynomial five. It is of the form:where .......
 and higher degree equations was an important development, the Abel–Ruffini theorem
Abel–Ruffini theorem

The Abel?Ruffini theorem states that there is no general solution in Radical to polynomial equations of degree five or higher....
 (Ruffini
Paolo Ruffini

Paolo Ruffini was an Italy mathematician and philosopher.By 1788 he had earned university degrees in philosophy, medicine/surgery, and mathematics....
 1799, Abel
Niels Henrik Abel

Niels Henrik Abel was a noted Norway mathematician who proved the impossibility of solving the quintic equation in radicals....
 1824) showed that they could not be solved by radicals (formula involving only arithmetical operations and roots). Hence it was necessary to consider the wider set of algebraic numbers (all solutions to polynomial equations). Galois
Évariste Galois

?variste Galois was a France mathematician born in Bourg-la-Reine. While still in his teens, he was able to determine a Necessary and sufficient conditions for apolynomial to be solvable by Nth root, thereby solving a long-standing problem....
 (1832) linked polynomial equations to group theory
Group theory

In mathematics and abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group .The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring , field , and vector spaces can all be seen as groups endowed with additional operations and axioms....
 giving rise to the field of Galois theory
Galois theory

In mathematics, more specifically in abstract algebra, Galois theory, named after ?variste Galois, provides a connection between field theory and group theory....
.

Even the set of algebraic numbers was not sufficient and the full set of real number includes transcendental numbers. The existence of which was first established by Liouville
Joseph Liouville

Joseph Liouville was a France mathematician....
 (1844, 1851). Hermite
Charles Hermite

Charles Hermite was a France mathematician who did research on number theory, quadratic forms, invariant theory, orthogonal polynomials, elliptic functions, and algebra....
 proved in 1873 that e
E (mathematical constant)

The mathematical constant e is the unique real number such that the function ex has the same value as the derivative, for all values of x....
 is transcendental and Lindemann
Ferdinand von Lindemann

Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann was a Germany mathematician, noted for his proof, published in 1882, that pi is a transcendental number, i.e., it is not a zero of any polynomial with rational number coefficients....
 proved in 1882 that p is transcendental. Finally Cantor
Georg Cantor

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a Germany mathematician, born in Russia. He is best known as the creator of set theory, which has become a foundations of mathematics in mathematics....
 shows that the set of all real number
Real number

In mathematics, the real numbers may be described informally in several different ways. The real numbers include both rational numbers, such as 42 and −23/129, and irrational numbers, such as pi and the square root of two; or, a real number can be given by an infinite decimal representation, such as 2.4871773339...., where the digits co...
s is uncountably infinite but the set of all algebraic number
Algebraic number

In mathematics, an algebraic number is a complex number that is a root of a non-zero polynomial in one variable with rational number coefficients....
s is countably infinite, so there is an uncountably infinite number of transcendental numbers.

Infinity


The earliest known conception of mathematical infinity
Infinity

Infinity comes from the Latin infinitas or "unboundedness." It refers to several distinct concepts – usually linked to the idea of "without end" – which arise in philosophy, mathematics, and theology....
 appears in the Yajur Veda - an ancient script in India, which at one point states "if you remove a part from infinity or add a part to infinity, still what remains is infinity". Infinity was a popular topic of philosophical study among the Jain mathematicians circa 400 BC. They distinguished between five types of infinity: infinite in one and two directions, infinite in area, infinite everywhere, and infinite perpetually.

In the West, the traditional notion of mathematical infinity was defined by Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
, who distinguished between actual infinity
Actual infinity

In metaphysics, Aristotle distinguished between actual and potential infinities . An actual infinity is something which is completed and definite and consists of infinitely many elements....
 and potential infinity; the general consensus being that only the latter had true value. Galileo's Two New Sciences
Two New Sciences

The Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences was Galileo Galilei final book and a sort of scientific testament covering much of his work in physics over the preceding thirty years....
 discussed the idea of one-to-one correspondences
Bijection

In mathematics, a bijection, or a bijective function is a function f from a set X to a set Y with the property that, for every y in Y, there is exactly one x in X such that f = y....
 between infinite sets. But the next major advance in the theory was made by Georg Cantor
Georg Cantor

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a Germany mathematician, born in Russia. He is best known as the creator of set theory, which has become a foundations of mathematics in mathematics....
; in 1895 he published a book about his new set theory
Set theory

Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies Set , which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics....
, introducing, among other things, transfinite number
Transfinite number

Transfinite numbers are cardinal numbers or ordinal numbers that are larger than all finite set numbers, yet not necessarily absolutely infinite....
s and formulating the continuum hypothesis
Continuum hypothesis

In mathematics, the continuum hypothesis is a hypothesis, advanced by Georg Cantor, about the possible sizes of infinite Set . Cantor introduced the concept of cardinal number to compare the sizes of infinite sets, and he gave two proofs that the cardinality of the set of integers is strictly smaller than that of the set of real numbers....
. This was the first mathematical model that represented infinity by numbers and gave rules for operating with these infinite numbers.

In the 1960s, Abraham Robinson
Abraham Robinson

Abraham Robinson was a mathematician who is most widely known for development of non-standard analysis, a mathematically rigorous system whereby infinitesimal and transfinite number numbers were incorporated into mathematics....
 showed how infinitely large and infinitesimal numbers can be rigorously defined and used to develop the field of nonstandard analysis. The system of hyperreal numbers represents a rigorous method of treating the ideas about infinite and infinitesimal
Infinitesimal

Infinitesimals have been used to express the idea of objects so small that there is no way to see them or to measure them. For everyday life, an infinitesimal object is an object which is smaller than any possible measure....
 numbers that had been used casually by mathematicians, scientists, and engineers ever since the invention of calculus
Calculus

Calculus is a branch of mathematics that includes the study of limit , derivatives, integrals, and infinite series, and constitutes a major part of modern university education....
 by Newton
Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton, Fellow of the Royal Society was an English people physicist, mathematician, Astronomy, Natural philosophy, Alchemy, and Theology and one of the the 100 in human history....
 and Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a Germany polymath who wrote primarily in Latin and French language.He occupies an equally grand place in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics....
.

A modern geometrical version of infinity is given by projective geometry
Projective geometry

In mathematics projective geometry is the study of geometric properties which are invariant under projective transformations. The field of projective geometry is itself divided into many subfields, two examples of which are projective algebraic geometry and projective differential geometry ....
, which introduces "ideal points at infinity," one for each spatial direction. Each family of parallel lines in a given direction is postulated to converge to the corresponding ideal point. This is closely related to the idea of vanishing points in perspective
Perspective (graphical)

File:Staircase perspective.jpgPerspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is perceived by the eye....
 drawing.

Complex numbers


The earliest fleeting reference to square roots of negative numbers occurred in the work of the mathematician and inventor Heron of Alexandria in the 1st century AD, when he considered the volume of an impossible frustum
Frustum

A frustum is the portion of a solid?normally a Cone or pyramid ?which lies between two parallel planes cutting the solid. The term is commonly used in computer graphics to describe the 3d area which is visible on the screen ....
 of a pyramid
Pyramid

A pyramid is a building where the outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a point. The base of pyramids are usually quadrilateral or trilateral , meaning that a pyramid usually has four or five faces....
. They became more prominent when in the 16th century closed formulas for the roots of third and fourth degree polynomials were discovered by Italian mathematicians (see Niccolo Fontana Tartaglia
Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia

Niccol? Fontana Tartaglia was a mathematician, an engineer , a surveyor and a bookkeeper from the then-Republic of Venice . He published many books, including the first Italian translations of Archimedes and Euclid, and an acclaimed compilation of mathematics....
, Gerolamo Cardano
Gerolamo Cardano

Gerolamo Cardano or Girolamo Cardano was an Italy Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer and gambler....
). It was soon realized that these formulas, even if one was only interested in real solutions, sometimes required the manipulation of square roots of negative numbers.

This was doubly unsettling since they did not even consider negative numbers to be on firm ground at the time. The term "imaginary" for these quantities was coined by René Descartes
René Descartes

Ren? Descartes , , also known as Renatus Cartesius , was a French philosophy, mathematician, scientist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic....
 in 1637 and was meant to be derogatory (see imaginary number
Imaginary number

In mathematics, an imaginary number is a complex number whose square value is a real number not greater than zero. The imaginary unit, denoted by i or j, is an example of an imaginary number....
 for a discussion of the "reality" of complex numbers). A further source of confusion was that the equation seemed to be capriciously inconsistent with the algebraic identity which is valid for positive real numbers a and b, and which was also used in complex number calculations with one of a, b positive and the other negative. The incorrect use of this identity, and the related identity in the case when both a and b are negative even bedeviled Euler. This difficulty eventually led him to the convention of using the special symbol i in place of v-1 to guard against this mistake.

The 18th century saw the labors of Abraham de Moivre
Abraham de Moivre

Abraham de Moivre was a France mathematician famous for de Moivre's formula, which links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory....
 and Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler

Leonhard Paul Euler was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist who spent most of his life in Russia and Germany.Euler made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus and graph theory....
. To De Moivre is due (1730) the well-known formula which bears his name, de Moivre's formula
De Moivre's formula

De Moivre's formula, named after Abraham de Moivre, states that for any complex number x and any integer n it holds thatThe formula is important because it connects complex numbers and trigonometric function....
:

and to Euler (1748) Euler's formula
Euler's formula

Euler's formula, named after Leonhard Euler, is a mathematics formula in complex analysis that shows a deep relationship between the trigonometric functions and the complex exponential function....
 of complex analysis
Complex analysis

Complex analysis, traditionally known as the theory of functions of a complex variable, is the branch of mathematics investigating Function of complex numbers....
:

The existence of complex numbers was not completely accepted until the geometrical interpretation had been described by Caspar Wessel
Caspar Wessel

Caspar Wessel was a Denmark-Norway mathematician.Wessel was born in Jonsrud, Vestby, Akershus, Norway. In 1763, having completed secondary school, he went to Denmark for further studies ....
 in 1799; it was rediscovered several years later and popularized by Carl Friedrich Gauss
Carl Friedrich Gauss

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss. was a Germans mathematician and scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, statistics, mathematical analysis, Differential geometry and topology, geodesy, electrostatics, astronomy and optics....
, and as a result the theory of complex numbers received a notable expansion. The idea of the graphic representation of complex numbers had appeared, however, as early as 1685, in Wallis
John Wallis

John Wallis was an England Mathematics who is given partial credit for the development of modern calculus. Between 1643 and 1689 he served as chief cryptographer for Parliament of the United Kingdom and, later, the royal court....
's De Algebra tractatus.

Also in 1799, Gauss provided the first generally accepted proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra
Fundamental theorem of algebra

In mathematics, the fundamental theorem of algebra states that every non-constant single-variable polynomial with complex number coefficients has at least one complex root ....
, showing that every polynomial over the complex numbers has a full set of solutions in that realm. The general acceptance of the theory of complex numbers is not a little due to the labors of Augustin Louis Cauchy and Niels Henrik Abel
Niels Henrik Abel

Niels Henrik Abel was a noted Norway mathematician who proved the impossibility of solving the quintic equation in radicals....
, and especially the latter, who was the first to boldly use complex numbers with a success that is well known.

Gauss
Carl Friedrich Gauss

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss. was a Germans mathematician and scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, statistics, mathematical analysis, Differential geometry and topology, geodesy, electrostatics, astronomy and optics....
 studied complex numbers of the form
Gaussian integer

A Gaussian integer is a complex number whose real and imaginary part are both integers. The Gaussian integers, with ordinary addition and multiplication of complex numbers, form an integral domain, usually written as Z[i]....
 a + bi, where a and b are integral, or rational (and i is one of the two roots of x2 + 1 = 0). His student, Ferdinand Eisenstein
Ferdinand Eisenstein

Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein was a Germany mathematician. He specialized in number theory and mathematical analysis, and proved several results that eluded even Carl Friedrich Gauss....
, studied the type a + b?, where ? is a complex root of x3 - 1 = 0. Other such classes (called cyclotomic fields) of complex numbers are derived from the roots of unity xk - 1 = 0 for higher values of k. This generalization is largely due to Ernst Kummer
Ernst Kummer

Ernst Eduard Kummer was a Germany mathematician. Highly skilled in applied mathematics, Kummer trained German army officers in ballistics; afterwards, he taught for 10 years in a Gymnasium , where he inspired the mathematical career of Leopold Kronecker....
, who also invented ideal number
Ideal number

In mathematics an ideal number is an algebraic integer which represents an ideal in the ring of integers of a number field; the idea was developed by Ernst Kummer, and led to Richard Dedekind's definition of ideal s for ring s....
s, which were expressed as geometrical entities by Felix Klein
Felix Klein

Felix Christian Klein was a Germany mathematician, known for his work in group theory, function theory, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the connections between geometry and group theory....
 in 1893. The general theory of fields was created by Évariste Galois
Évariste Galois

?variste Galois was a France mathematician born in Bourg-la-Reine. While still in his teens, he was able to determine a Necessary and sufficient conditions for apolynomial to be solvable by Nth root, thereby solving a long-standing problem....
, who studied the fields generated by the roots of any polynomial equation F(x) = 0.

In 1850 Victor Alexandre Puiseux took the key step of distinguishing between poles and branch points, and introduced the concept of essential singular points
Mathematical singularity

In mathematics, a singularity is in general a point at which a given mathematical object is not defined, or a point of an exceptional Set where it fails to be well-behaved in some particular way, such as derivative....
; this would eventually lead to the concept of the extended complex plane.

Prime numbers


Prime number
Prime number

In mathematics, a prime number is a natural number which has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: 1 and itself. An infinitude of prime numbers exists, as demonstrated by Euclid around 300 BC....
s have been studied throughout recorded history. Euclid devoted one book of the Elements to the theory of primes; in it he proved the infinitude of the primes and the fundamental theorem of arithmetic
Fundamental theorem of arithmetic

In number theory and algebraic number theory, the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic states that any integer greater than 1 can be written as a unique product of prime numbers....
, and presented the Euclidean algorithm
Euclidean algorithm

In number theory, the Euclidean algorithm is an algorithm to determine the greatest common divisor of two elements of any Euclidean domain . Its major significance is that it does not require factorization the two integers, and it is also significant in that it is one of the oldest algorithms known, dating back to the ancient Greeks....
 for finding the greatest common divisor
Greatest common divisor

In mathematics, the greatest common divisor , sometimes known as the greatest common factor or highest common factor , of two non-zero integers, is the largest positive integer that divisor both numbers without remainder....
 of two numbers.

In 240 BC, Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greeks mathematician, poet, sportsperson, geographer and astronomer. He made several discoveries and inventions including a system of latitude and longitude....
 used the Sieve of Eratosthenes
Sieve of Eratosthenes

In mathematics, the Sieve of Eratosthenes is a simple, ancient algorithm for finding all prime numbers up to a specified integer.It works efficiently for the smaller primes ....
 to quickly isolate prime numbers. But most further development of the theory of primes in Europe dates to the Renaissance
Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
 and later eras.

In 1796, Adrien-Marie Legendre
Adrien-Marie Legendre

Adrien-Marie Legendre was a France mathematician. He made important contributions to statistics, number theory, abstract algebra and mathematical analysis....
 conjectured the prime number theorem
Prime number theorem

In number theory, the prime number theorem describes the asymptotic analysis distribution of the prime numbers. The prime number theorem gives a rough description of how the primes are distributed....
, describing the asymptotic distribution of primes. Other results concerning the distribution of the primes include Euler's proof that the sum of the reciprocals of the primes diverges, and the Goldbach conjecture which claims that any sufficiently large even number is the sum of two primes. Yet another conjecture related to the distribution of prime numbers is the Riemann hypothesis
Riemann hypothesis

In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis, due to , is a conjecture about the distribution of the Root of the Riemann zeta function stating that all non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function have real part 1/2....
, formulated by Bernhard Riemann
Bernhard Riemann

Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann was a Germany mathematics who made important contributions to mathematical analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity....
 in 1859. The prime number theorem was finally proved by Jacques Hadamard
Jacques Hadamard

Jacques Salomon Hadamard was a France mathematician best known for his proof of the prime number theorem in 1896....
 and Charles de la Vallée-Poussin in 1896. The conjectures of Goldbach and Riemann yet remain to be proved or refuted.

Word alternatives

Some numbers traditionally have alternative words to express them, including the following:
  • dozen
    Dozen

    Dozen is another word for the number 12 . The dozen may be one of the earliest primitive groupings, perhaps because there are approximately a dozen cycles of the moon or months in a cycle of the sun or year....
    : 12
  • Baker's dozen
    Baker's dozen

    A baker's dozen, also known as a long dozen and a "long measure", is 13 , one more than a proper dozen. The expression found its genesis in 13th-century England, when an Assize of Bread and Ale was introduced....
    : 13
  • score: 20
  • gross
    Gross (unit)

    A gross is equal to a dozen dozen, i.e. 12 × 12 = 144 .It can be used in duodecimal counting. The use a gross likely originated from the fact that 144 can be counted on the fingers using the fingertips and first two joints of each finger when marked by the thumb of one hand....
    : 144


See also


External links

  • , lecture by Robin Wilson, 07/11/07, Gresham College
    Gresham College

    File:Gresham College, 1740.jpgGresham College is an unusual institution of higher learning off Holborn in central London. It enrolls no students and grants no academic degrees....
     (available for download as MP3 or MP4, and as a text file).