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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 ...
In his Essai sur la théorie des nombres (1798), Adrien-Marie Legendre derives a necessary and sufficient condition for a rational number to be a convergent of the simple continued fraction of a given real number. [4] A consequence of this criterion, often called Legendre's theorem within the study of continued fractions, is as follows: [5 ...
Algebraic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses the techniques of abstract algebra to study the integers, rational numbers, and their generalizations. Number-theoretic questions are expressed in terms of properties of algebraic objects such as algebraic number fields and their rings of integers , finite fields , and function fields .
Such a number is algebraic and can be expressed as the sum of a rational number and the square root of a rational number. Constructible number: A number representing a length that can be constructed using a compass and straightedge. Constructible numbers form a subfield of the field of algebraic numbers, and include the quadratic surds.
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 ...
Some real numbers have decimal expansions that eventually get into loops, endlessly repeating a sequence of one or more digits: 1 ⁄ 3 = 0.33333... 1 ⁄ 7 = 0.142857142857... 1318 ⁄ 185 = 7.1243243243... Every time this happens the number is still a rational number (i.e. can alternatively be represented as a ratio of an integer and a ...
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The set of rational numbers is not complete. For example, the sequence (1; 1.4; 1.41; 1.414; 1.4142; 1.41421; ...), where each term adds a digit of the decimal expansion of the positive square root of 2, is Cauchy but it does not converge to a rational number (in the real numbers, in contrast, it converges to the positive square root of 2).