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In base 10, a fraction has a repeating decimal if and only if in lowest terms, its denominator has any prime factors besides 2 or 5, ... 1 / 2 = 0.6, 1 / ...
The continued fraction representation for a real number is finite if and only if it is a rational number. In contrast, the decimal representation of a rational number may be finite, for example 137 / 1600 = 0.085625, or infinite with a repeating cycle, for example 4 / 27 = 0.148148148148...
Rules for calculating the periods of repeating decimals from rational fractions were given by James Whitbread Lee Glaisher in 1878. [5] For a prime p, the period of its reciprocal divides p − 1. [6] The sequence of recurrence periods of the reciprocal primes (sequence A002371 in the OEIS) appears in the 1973 Handbook of Integer Sequences.
However, most decimal fractions like 0.1 or 0.123 are infinite repeating fractions in base 2. and hence cannot be represented that way. Similarly, any decimal fraction a/10 m, such as 1/100 or 37/1000, can be exactly represented in fixed point with a power-of-ten scaling factor 1/10 n with any n ≥ m.
In mathematics, "rational" is often used as a noun abbreviating "rational number". The adjective rational sometimes means that the coefficients are rational numbers. For example, a rational point is a point with rational coordinates (i.e., a point whose coordinates are rational numbers); a rational matrix is a matrix of rational numbers; a rational polynomial may be a polynomial with rational ...
The computation of f(π ⁄ 6) = 1 ⁄ 2 = g 5 (π ⁄ 6) is shown. The notion f 1/n must be used with care when the equation g n (x) = f(x) has multiple solutions, which is normally the case, as in Babbage's equation of the functional roots of the identity map.
This is also a repeating binary fraction 0.0 0011... . It may come as a surprise that terminating decimal fractions can have repeating expansions in binary. It is for this reason that many are surprised to discover that 1/10 + ... + 1/10 (addition of 10 numbers) differs from 1 in binary floating point arithmetic. In fact, the only binary ...
Some balanced ternary fractions have multiple representations too. For example, 1 / 6 = 0.1 𝖳 bal3 = 0.0 1 bal3. Certainly, in the decimal and binary, we may omit the rightmost trailing infinite 0s after the radix point and gain a representations of integer or terminating fraction.