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The Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta of Brahmagupta (c. 598–668) is the earliest text to treat zero as a number in its own right and to define operations involving zero. [17] According to Brahmagupta, A positive or negative number when divided by zero is a fraction with the zero as denominator.
For an integer n, the 2-order of n (also called valuation) is the largest natural number ν such that 2 ν divides n. This definition applies to positive and negative numbers n, although some authors restrict it to positive n; and one may define the 2-order of 0 to be infinity (see also parity of zero). [2] The 2-order of n is written ν 2 (n ...
What is being divided is called the dividend, which is divided by the divisor, and the result is called the quotient. At an elementary level the division of two natural numbers is, among other possible interpretations, the process of calculating the number of times one number is contained within another.
The number 2 raised to any positive integer power must be even (because it is divisible by 2) and the number 3 raised to any positive integer power must be odd (since none of its prime factors will be 2). Clearly, an integer cannot be both odd and even at the same time: we have a contradiction.
Unlike rational number arithmetic, real number arithmetic is closed under exponentiation as long as it uses a positive number as its base. The same is true for the logarithm of positive real numbers as long as the logarithm base is positive and not 1. [105] Irrational numbers involve an infinite non-repeating series of decimal digits.
The predecessor of a natural number (excluding zero) is the previous natural number and is the result of subtracting one from that number. For example, the successor of zero is one, and the predecessor of eleven is ten ( 0 + 1 = 1 {\displaystyle 0+1=1} and 11 − 1 = 10 {\displaystyle 11-1=10} ).
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As an illustration of this, the parity cycle (1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0) and its sub-cycle (1 1 0 0) are associated to the same fraction 5 / 7 when reduced to lowest terms. In this context, assuming the validity of the Collatz conjecture implies that (1 0) and (0 1) are the only parity cycles generated by positive whole numbers (1 and 2 ...