As any algebra student is likely to ask a teacher, "Who ever uses complex numbers anyway?" The obvious answer, of course, is "math teachers." But that's just the beginning. Most scientists and ...

Engineering involves a lot of math. And engineers sometimes get so involved in manipulating numbers that they forget some of the principles underlying the numerical manipulations they take for granted ...

Several years ago one of us, Toni, asked another of us, Marco, to come to his office at the Institute of Photonic Sciences, a large research center in Castelldefels near Barcelona. “There is a problem ...