The real numbers, complex numbers, quaternions and octonions give Lie 2-superalgebras that describe the parallel transport of superstrings, and Lie 3-superalgebras that describe the parallel transport of 2-branes!

We tend to think of recent technological change as a complex process involving huge amounts of capital and labor (large numbers of researchers and developers). Yet the Winter Olympics should remind us that it is still possible to im...

The New York Times says Apple has been working on a multitouch version of their iWork office suite — Pages word processor, Numbers spread sheet, and Keynote presentations — for their rumored upcoming iTablet/iSlate, along with compl...

" Look for the next batch of CRE numbers to be the worst ever as Tishman and BlackRock move the loan backing Stuyvesant Town to special servicing, in essence throwing in the towel, and pushing the affordable home complex into defaul...

Big Joe LaPuma over @ Complex caught up with Curtis and asked him about the perceived tension between him and Dr. Dre, BISD, Fat Joe’s first week numbers, Jadakiss, Em’s exclusion from and Gucci Mane’s #6 spot on the MTV Hottest MCs...

Big Joe LaPuma over @ Complex caught up with Curtis and asked him about the rumored tension between him and Dr. Dre, BISD, Fat Joe’s first week numbers, Jadakiss, Em’s exclusion from and Gucci Mane’s #6 spot on the MTV Hottest MCs l...

JULES CRITTENDEN: Quagmire! “The complex picture those numbers paint reminds me a little of the Iraq War debate, when polls indicated Americans wanted to win, they just thought it was a quagmire. Going a little deeper into the art...

Let z_j, j=1,...,n, be complex numbers such that |z_j|=1 and sum z_j = 0.Is it true that the z_j can be decomposed into sets cE_k, where |c|=1 and E_k is the set of all kth roots of 1?(I think yes, but I can't seem to induct properl...

Last May we started talking about linear algebra, with a little aside into complex numbers and another into power series along the way. Before that all, long long ago, we were talking about single variable calculus. Specifically, ...

Essay in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Reading by the Numbers “Reading management” software cannot identify what makes some books so complex and lovely and painful....

“Reading management” software cannot identify what makes some books so complex and lovely and painful.

The body of a mutilated murder-victim was positively identified by matching the serial numbers on her breast-implants: Fiore's body was found last Saturday in a Dumpster behind an apartment complex in Buena Park, just outside Anahei...

The recently introduced Nissan Leaf EV will be available in five major U.S. markets as early as next year, but only in limited numbers. The reasoning behind this is a bit complex, but as we reported, the Obama administration has...

Margot, a zoo veterinary technician writes, “In reading Carl Seife’s fabulous book Zero, he presents a graph of complex numbers which plot a changing exponent for the basic formula (X+iY)n in which X represents real numbers and Y re...

The simplest structure we can look for in our bilinear forms is that they be symmetric, antisymmetric, or (if we’re working over the complex numbers) Hermitian. A symmetric form gives the same answer, an antisymmetric form negates ...

Let’s pick up our discussion of matrices and forms and try to tie both views of our matrix together. We’re considering a bilinear form $ on a vector space over the real or complex numbers, which we can also think of as a linear ma...

…with some facts and some incorrect facts (which is fairly good considering how confusingly complex the maze of transit is).  "TriMet ridership numbers sliding as opening of MAX line approaches" he writes.  I wrote this comment on t...

Not everyone is good with numbers, so why has every combination lock up ‘til now used them? Many kids (and most adults) have suffered from the dreaded 'combo amnesia' from time to time, which is especially stressful when there are ...

As ever-increasing numbers of soldiers are being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the need to understand this complex and troubling experience grows larger. In order to better understand what soldiers are going ...

A good friend of mine recently discovered some of the fun things you can do with complex numbers if you're using them to represent points in the plane. Shortly thereafter, I re-read a passage by Tony Smith about why one should be i...