If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the ...

Over the centuries, mathematicians have developed a variety of methods of solving equations. Using the capabilities of modern computers, they have explored in detail how these age-old recipes ...

Van der Waerden’s conjecture mystified mathematicians for 85 years. Its solution shows how polynomial roots relate to one another. The equation x 2 – 5 = 0 is a bit trickier. The polynomial can’t be ...

In this article we consider matrix factorizations of a polynomial where the two matrices appearing in the factorization are the same, which we call "matrix square roots." The main result is that any ...