Attempt to view irrational number as a fraction I am wondering if an irrational number can be represented as a fraction in this way: For example (to represent pi): pi= 3.14159265359...=(314159265359...)/(100000000000...) In the fraction (314159265359...)/(100000000000...), the numerator is an integer whose digits have the same order as digits of pi , and the denominator is simply 10^((of digits of numerator-1)). Isn't an irrational number represented as a fraction in this way? Probably I misunderstand the concept of the irrational number. Thanks in advance.
Alvin Parks
Answered question
2022-11-02
Attempt to view irrational number as a fraction I am wondering if an irrational number can be represented as a fraction in this way: For example (to represent ):
In the fraction , the numerator is an integer whose digits have the same order as digits of , and the denominator is simply . Isn't an irrational number represented as a fraction in this way? Probably I misunderstand the concept of the irrational number. Thanks in advance.
Answer & Explanation
ebizsavvy1txn
Beginner2022-11-03Added 14 answers
If the numerator and denominator contains a finite number of digits each (and both are integers), then it's a rational number, but it won't equal . If they have infinitely many digits, then I don't know what the expression even means, but even if one could make sense of it, and the value would be , the numerator and denominator wouldn't be integers, and thus you wouldn't have a rational number, at least not a priori.
Uriah Molina
Beginner2022-11-04Added 7 answers
An irrational number is a number that can't be represented as a ratio (i.e., a fraction) of two integers. Since the digits of pi go on forever, your numerator is an infinite sequence of digits. That isn't an integer; only a finite sequence of digits defines an integer. Additionally, it's hard to know what your fraction means. You say the denominator is , but the number of digits in the numerator is infinite, so is your denominator ? That isn't well-defined; it certainly isn't an integer.