Convert any repeating decimal to a fraction?

In summary: For -.533333..., Let x = 0.88118811..., This is the number that will be divided by the number of 9s in the repeating decimal pattern- in this case 9. In summary, 0.88118811... divides to .8811/9999 or .8811/3699.
  • #36


Does the line through YesIam's name mean that he is banned? This is unfortunate since I was hoping he would give the answer or at least another clue.

char.limit gave the correct answer to the question as it was posed along with a proof. It is aggravating in the extreme for him to come back with "people ... really think that it has to be some kind of proof because they have read it somewhere". The proof is a good one and no criticism of char.limit will rub off on the proof.

While not a solution to the question as posed, I have generalized the concept of number to get one kind of solution, and the concept of addition and multiplication to get another. It is aggravating in the extreme to have him come back with "no one on these forums really wants to try to solve anything more complicated than THEY can solve".

OK, so he burns me up. But I still want to know his answer. I have one more generalization. When he says a number added to itself, he means something like 3 + 3 + 3 = 3 x 3. This is a pedantic and uninteresting interpretation of his words, but as I said, char.limit has already solved the problem as it was posed.
 
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  • #37


Jimmy Snyder said:
Does the line through YesIam's name mean that he is banned?

Yes

Personally, after spending a while going over it, I don't think there is an answer to his question. I say this because I believe he mis-stated the question (whether deliberately or because he doesn't understand).

If there is an answer, I bet the actual question is rather different to what we've seen.
 
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  • #38


... So... he's gone now? All because of this thread? Some people just aren't meant to live on The Internet, I guess.

I'm sad to hear that he seemed to claim that any 4th grader would know the numbers and recognize them as numbers-- That would certainly imply that other such numbers would be discrete values in the subset of the Reals. And if so, then the existence of such a number can be disproved by the logic in the original thread.

I was hoping for something clever, but I suspect if he WERE correct, it's only insofar as a different interpretation of the wording. IE, we were all looking for "x*x = x+x", and really, the wording allowed for some other meaning (I don't see how offhand). I'm still rather hoping that somehow we can learn what the solution was that he had in mind, but at this point I suppose we'll just have to assume he was wrong. Oh well.

DaveE
 

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