Irrational numbers are numbers that are neither whole numbers (like 2, 0, or -3) nor ratios of whole numbers. Irrational numbers are real numbers in the sense that they appear in measurements of geometric objects--for example, the number pi (), which...

Irrational numbers—non-terminating, non-repeating decimal numbers—have been the source of much puzzlement to mathematicians throughout history. The Greeks of the Classical Period (600 b.c. -300 b.c.) were the first mathematicians to puzzle...

The set of irrational numbers is the set of real numbers that cannot be expressed as the ratio, or quotient, of two integers. Thus, an irrational number cannot be written in the form , where a and b are integers and b ≠ 0. A real number is...

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. Informally, this means numbers that cannot be...

Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, is known as an irrational number because it can't be exactly expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers. It would take an infinite number of digits to write it out in full...

David Boyle. The Sum of Our Discontent: Why Numbers Make Us Irrational. New York: Texere, 2001, 200 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Michael J. Zickar, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH. It is always fun to attack an...