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The greatest common divisor (GCD) of integers a and b, at least one of which is nonzero, is the greatest positive integer d such that d is a divisor of both a and b; that is, there are integers e and f such that a = de and b = df, and d is the largest such integer.
The greatest common divisor g of a and b is the unique (positive) common divisor of a and b that is divisible by any other common divisor c. [6] The greatest common divisor can be visualized as follows. [7] Consider a rectangular area a by b, and any common divisor c that divides both a and b exactly.
A fraction that is reducible can be reduced by dividing both the numerator and denominator by a common factor. It can be fully reduced to lowest terms if both are divided by their greatest common divisor. [5] In order to find the greatest common divisor, the Euclidean algorithm or prime factorization can be used. The Euclidean algorithm is ...
For example, the numerators of fractions with common denominators can simply be added, such that + = and that <, since each fraction has the common denominator 12. Without computing a common denominator, it is not obvious as to what 5 12 + 11 18 {\displaystyle {\frac {5}{12}}+{\frac {11}{18}}} equals, or whether 5 12 {\displaystyle {\frac {5 ...
The first step is to determine a common denominator D of these fractions – preferably the least common denominator, which is the least common multiple of the Q i. This means that each Q i is a factor of D , so D = R i Q i for some expression R i that is not a fraction.
This is a common procedure in mathematics, used to reduce fractions or calculate a value for a given variable in a fraction. If we have an equation =, where x is a variable we are interested in solving for, we can use cross-multiplication to determine that =.
In integral calculus we would want to write a fractional algebraic expression as the sum of its partial fractions in order to take the integral of each simple fraction separately. Once the original denominator, D 0, has been factored we set up a fraction for each factor in the denominator.
A unit fraction is a common fraction with a numerator of 1 (e.g., 1 / 7 ). Unit fractions can also be expressed using negative exponents, as in 2 −1, which represents 1/2, and 2 −2, which represents 1/(2 2) or 1/4. A dyadic fraction is a common fraction in which the denominator is a power of two, e.g. 1 / 8 = 1 / 2 3 .