Talk:Convert decimal number to rational: Difference between revisions
Talk:Convert decimal number to rational (view source)
Revision as of 00:21, 19 November 2012
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::::::: That was sort of my point -- that floating point numbers (regardless of the base used) are necessarily approximations in a wide variety of contexts. When dealing with measurements of distance, for example, this is assumed (since the measurements themselves are going to be approximations). That said, the task description just says "decimal number" and not "floating point". Still... the same holds there: finite length decimal numbers can only approximate fractions whose denominators are not representable exactly as powers of 2 and 5. --[[User:Rdm|Rdm]] 22:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
== Decimal or floating point number?? ==
This task confuses me. I was told at school that a decimal number is a rational number which, once written in decimal notation, has a finite number of decimals.
So a decimal number has an easy rational way of writing it. For instance:
<math>1.1007 = {11007\over 1000}</math>
If you consider repeating decimals, then you're talking about rationals, and the task then consists in finding the numerator and the denominator of a rational, given its integer part and its (possibly infinite, but repetitive) list of decimals. This should be clarified imho.--[[User:Grondilu|Grondilu]] 00:21, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
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