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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 ...
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.
The p-adic fields are characteristic zero fields that are widely used in number theory. They have absolute values which are very different from those of complex numbers. For any ordered field, such as the field of rational numbers or the field of real numbers, the characteristic is 0.
In mathematics, the notion of number has been extended over the centuries to include zero (0), [3] negative numbers, [4] rational numbers such as one half (), real numbers such as the square root of 2 and π, [5] and complex numbers [6] which extend the real numbers with a square root of −1 (and its combinations with real numbers by adding or ...
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 .
For example, the field of rational numbers Q has characteristic 0 since no positive integer n is zero. Otherwise, if there is a positive integer n satisfying this equation, the smallest such positive integer can be shown to be a prime number. It is usually denoted by p and the field is said to have characteristic p then.
Rational number arithmetic is the branch of arithmetic that deals with the manipulation of numbers that can be expressed as a ratio of two integers. [93] Most arithmetic operations on rational numbers can be calculated by performing a series of integer arithmetic operations on the numerators and the denominators of the involved numbers.
This category represents all rational numbers, that is, those real numbers which can be represented in the form: ...where and are integers and is ...