Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Float numbers in module programming | From | Valdis.Kletnieks@vt ... | Date | Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:02:43 -0500 |
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On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 08:09:14 EST, "linux-os (Dick Johnson)" said:
> For instance __all__ real numbers, except for transcendentals, can > be represented as a ratio of two integers. For instance, you can't > represent 1/3 exactly as a decimal.
That's a "rational" number (or alternately, an algebraic number of order 1. Irrational numbers result from algebraic expressions but aren't representable as a ratio (for instance, the square root of 2, or the number phi - both of these are algebraic numbers of order 2). Trancendentals are numbers which can't result from algebraic expressions with whole number coefficients (for instance, pi and e).
All transcendentals are irrational, but not all irrationals are transcendental.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AlgebraicNumber.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/IrrationalNumber.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TranscendentalNumber.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoldenRatio.html [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature] | |