The Mathematical Gazette is the original journal of the Mathematical Association and it is now over a century old. Its readership is a mixture of school teachers, college and university lecturers, ...

§RU.1 IN MY PRIMER ON THE SOLUTION of the general cubic, I mentioned the cube roots of 1 (§CQ.4). There are three of these little devils. Obviously 1 itself is a cube root of 1, since 1×1×1 = 1. The ...

To a nonmathematician, having the letter "i" represent a number that does not quite exist and is "imaginary" can be hard to wrap your head around. If you open your mind to this way of thinking, ...

§CQ.1 THE FIRST GREAT ADVANCE in algebra after the Middle Ages was the general solution of the cubic equation, immediately followed by a solution for the quartic. I tell the full story in the next ...