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A repeating decimal or recurring decimal is a decimal representation of a number whose digits are eventually periodic (that is, after some place, the same sequence of digits is repeated forever); if this sequence consists only of zeros (that is if there is only a finite number of nonzero digits), the decimal is said to be terminating, and is not considered as repeating.
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.
Base 10 may be assumed if no base is specified, in which case the expansion of the number is called a repeating decimal. In base 10, if a full reptend prime ends in the digit 1, then each digit 0, 1, ..., 9 appears in the reptend the same number of times as each other digit. [1]: 166 (For such primes in base 10, see OEIS: A073761.)
The repeating decimal commonly written as 0.999... represents exactly the same quantity as the number one. Despite having the appearance of representing a smaller number, 0.999... is a symbol for the number 1 in exactly the same way that 0.333... is an equivalent notation for the number represented by the fraction 1 ⁄ 3. [438]
Also the converse is true: The decimal expansion of a rational number is either finite, or endlessly repeating. Finite decimal representations can also be seen as a special case of infinite repeating decimal representations. For example, 36 ⁄ 25 = 1.44 = 1.4400000...; the endlessly repeated sequence is the one-digit sequence "0".
In mathematics, Midy's theorem, named after French mathematician E. Midy, [1] is a statement about the decimal expansion of fractions a/p where p is a prime and a/p has a repeating decimal expansion with an even period (sequence A028416 in the OEIS). If the period of the decimal representation of a/p is 2n, so that