CentralNotice From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search This article is about a mathematical concept. For the piece of jewellery , see ring . In mathematics , a ring is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with two operations : addition (+) and multiplication (•). These two operations must follow special rules to work together in a ring. Mathematicians use the word "ring" this way because a mathematician named David Hilbert used the German word Zahlring to describe something he was writing about. The integers , the rational numbers , the real numbers and the complex numbers are all famous examples of rings. There are other, more unusual examples of rings, however they all obey the special rules below. Rules [ change | change source ] The operations are used to combine two elements to form a third element. Th...