Vol. 30 (2020)
Articles

A natural way to write non-Natural numbers

Gurdial Arora
Mathematics Department , Xavier University of Louisiana, 1 Drexel Drive, New Orleans, LA 70125 U.S.A.
Valerio De Angelis
Mathematics Department , Xavier University of Louisiana, 1 Drexel Drive, New Orleans, LA 70125 U.S.A.
Sindhu Unnithan
Mathematics Department , Xavier University of Louisiana, 1 Drexel Drive, New Orleans, LA 70125 U.S.A.
portada

Publicado 2024-07-11

Palabras clave

  • Continued fractions,
  • Stern-Brocot tree,
  • Elementary number theory

Resumen

In the early 20th century, continued fractions used to be a regular
ingredient of the school curriculum, but they have now all but disappeared. In
this article we present an elementary treatment based on the Stern-Brocot tree,
with emphasis on the fact that they provide a more natural way to represent
irrational numbers than the usual decimal expansion.