biography: one of the most revolutionary numbers in all of mathematics, and not just because of its rotund symbol.
the notion of “nothingness” as a number in and of itself rather than merely as a placeholder was discovered independently in many parts of the world at many different times, particularly in cultures that used forms of positional notation (ie. writing numbers in a way where every symbol has some numerical value, and its position within a number indicates that the value is multiplied by some power of a “base”, often ten). due to its strange nature as a number with no value, many properties that are often taken for granted with other numbers do not apply to zero.
in the Number Tournament, zero has beaten some incredibly iconic numbers seemingly effortlessly. fifteen, thirty-six, sixty-four, the golden ratio, and negative one were all no match for naught. it is truly a force to be reckoned with.
zero is a number associated with emptiness, with the void, as well as with new beginnings. it is one of the foundations of all of mathematics, and it is certainly one of the best numbers.
biography: another groundbreaking number, discovered much more recently than zero. much like zero, in its earliest uses i (the imaginary unit) was considered more of placeholder than a number in its own right, as the name “imaginary number” might suggest.
the imaginary numbers (and the complex numbers they are a part of) were born as an elegant solution to a practical problem, and they’ve persisted as a tool for modeling things in the physical world, no less real than the “real numbers”. complex numbers are useful for “translating” statements about shapes into statements about numbers, and vice versa. they are crucial to the Fourier transform, which itself is a vital part of signal processing and many areas of physics.
in the Number Tournament, i faced off against a series of increasingly tougher challengers: forty-seven, twenty-seven, e, two, and Not a Number, each race closer than the last. i fought hard to get here, and we’re all very proud of it for making it this far.
i is associated with the mathematical tradition of taking “you can’t do that” as a challenge, and with thinking outside of the box. it is a fundamental component of our modern understanding of the world, and it is certainly one of the best numbers.
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