Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
How to Determine Dedekind Cuts
Description
A detailed tutorial on how to determine Dedekind cuts. Step by step tutorial including several examples of Dedekind cuts for reference.
Overview
A Dedekind cut is a partition of rational numbers into two non-empty sets A and B, such that all elements of A are less than elements of B, and A has no greatest element. The cut itself is a gap that is located between A and B, which is normally found by creating a new, irrational number, and setting it in the gap. What irrational number you use depends on what numbers you have partitioned into the two sets. It is like the number line of advanced algebra, that has both rational and irrational numbers on it instead of just integers. The Dedekind cut was named after Richard Dedekind.
Tags: algebra, between, cut, Dedekind, elements, empty, gap, greater, integer, irrational, less, line, non, non-empty, numbers, partition, rational, Richard, sets, than
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Friday, September 18th, 2009
Introduction to Irrational Numbers
Description
A detailed tutorial on the definition of an irrational number. Step by step tutorial including several examples of irrational numbers for reference.
Overview
An irrational number is a number that cannot be written as the ratio of 2 integers. However, this does not mean they have no place on a number line. One of the most famous irrational numbers is pi, which is approximately equal to 3.14 – however, this is just a simplified version of the actual number. Another famous irrational number is the square root of 2. This is equal to around 1.41. Both irrational numbers and rational numbers are real numbers, which include all integers.
Tags: arithmetic, imaginary, integers, irrational, Math, natural, number, numbers, pi, ratio, rational, real, sqrt(2), square root
Posted in Arithmetic | No Comments »