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In fact, all square roots of natural numbers, other than of perfect squares, are irrational. [2] Like all real numbers, irrational numbers can be expressed in positional notation, notably as a decimal number. In the case of irrational numbers, the decimal expansion does not terminate, nor end with a repeating sequence.
(See square root of 2 for proofs that this is an irrational number, and quadratic irrational for a proof for all non-square natural numbers.) The square root function maps rational numbers into algebraic numbers, the latter being a superset of the rational numbers).
This application also invokes the integer root theorem, a stronger version of the rational root theorem for the case when () is a monic polynomial with integer coefficients; for such a polynomial, all roots are necessarily integers (which is not, as 2 is not a perfect square) or irrational. The rational root theorem (or integer root theorem ...
It shows that the square root of 2 cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers. The proof bifurcated "the numbers" into two non-overlapping collections—the rational numbers and the irrational numbers. There is a famous passage in Plato's Theaetetus in which it is stated that Theodorus (Plato's teacher) proved the irrationality of
Rational numbers have irrationality exponent 1, while (as a consequence of Dirichlet's approximation theorem) every irrational number has irrationality exponent at least 2. On the other hand, an application of Borel-Cantelli lemma shows that almost all numbers, including all algebraic irrational numbers , have an irrationality exponent exactly ...
An algebraic number is a number that is a root of a non-zero polynomial in one variable with integer (or, equivalently, rational) coefficients. For example, the golden ratio , ( 1 + 5 ) / 2 {\displaystyle (1+{\sqrt {5}})/2} , is an algebraic number, because it is a root of the polynomial x 2 − x − 1 .
A method analogous to piece-wise linear approximation but using only arithmetic instead of algebraic equations, uses the multiplication tables in reverse: the square root of a number between 1 and 100 is between 1 and 10, so if we know 25 is a perfect square (5 × 5), and 36 is a perfect square (6 × 6), then the square root of a number greater than or equal to 25 but less than 36, begins with ...
The classic proof that the square root of 2 is irrational is a refutation by contradiction. [11] Indeed, we set out to prove the negation ¬ ∃ a, b ∈ . a/b = √ 2 by assuming that there exist natural numbers a and b whose ratio is the square root of two, and derive a contradiction.