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17 indivisible camels. The 17-animal inheritance puzzle is a mathematical puzzle involving unequal but fair allocation of indivisible goods, usually stated in terms of inheritance of a number of large animals (17 camels, 17 horses, 17 elephants, etc.) which must be divided in some stated proportion among a number of beneficiaries.
In mathematics, the Farey sequence of order n is the sequence of completely reduced fractions, either between 0 and 1, or without this restriction, [a] which when in lowest terms have denominators less than or equal to n, arranged in order of increasing size. With the restricted definition, each Farey sequence starts with the value 0, denoted ...
Problems 1–6 compute divisions of a certain number of loaves of bread by 10 men and record the outcome in unit fractions. Problems 7–20 show how to multiply the expressions 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 = 7/4, and 1 + 2/3 + 1/3 = 2 by different fractions. Problems 21–23 are problems in completion, which in modern notation are simply subtraction problems.
A simple fraction (also known as a common fraction or vulgar fraction, where vulgar is Latin for "common") is a rational number written as a / b or , where a and b are both integers. [9] As with other fractions, the denominator (b) cannot be zero. Examples include 1 2 , − 8 5 , −8 5 , and 8 −5 .
An Egyptian fraction is a finite sum of distinct unit fractions, such as That is, each fraction in the expression has a numerator equal to 1 and a denominator that is a positive integer, and all the denominators differ from each other. The value of an expression of this type is a positive rational number ; for instance the Egyptian fraction ...
In mathematics, a harmonic progression (or harmonic sequence) is a progression formed by taking the reciprocals of an arithmetic progression. Equivalently, a sequence is a harmonic progression when each term is the harmonic mean of the neighboring terms. As a third equivalent characterization, it is an infinite sequence of the form.
Partial fraction decomposition. In algebra, the partial fraction decomposition or partial fraction expansion of a rational fraction (that is, a fraction such that the numerator and the denominator are both polynomials) is an operation that consists of expressing the fraction as a sum of a polynomial (possibly zero) and one or several fractions ...
Pell's equation, also called the Pell–Fermat equation, is any Diophantine equation of the form where n is a given positive nonsquare integer, and integer solutions are sought for x and y. In Cartesian coordinates, the equation is represented by a hyperbola; solutions occur wherever the curve passes through a point whose x and y coordinates ...