By Anupum Pant
In terms of how long mathematics has been around, transcendental numbers is a relatively new discovery. Most of the time we’ve been familiar with only algebraic numbers. But these are a universe apart. And it should be interesting to you that these numbers are the ones which cover most of your number line.
These numbers are real, and yet cannot be the solutions of an algebraic polynomial equation whose coefficients are all integers. All of them are irrational, but not all irrational are transcendental. For instance, square root of two is irrational, but not transcendental.
The most common examples of transcendental numbers are ‘pi’ and ‘e’ whose approximate values are 3.14159 and 2.7182 respectively. Their actual value can never be listed, only can be represented.
Numberphile explains…