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Diophantine Approximation
In number theory, the study of Diophantine approximation deals with the approximation of real numbers by rational numbers. It is named after Diophantus of Alexandria. The first problem was to know how well a real number can be approximated by rational numbers. For this problem, a rational number ''a''/''b'' is a "good" approximation of a real number ''α'' if the absolute value of the difference between ''a''/''b'' and ''α'' may not decrease if ''a''/''b'' is replaced by another rational number with a smaller denominator. This problem was solved during the 18th century by means of continued fractions. Knowing the "best" approximations of a given number, the main problem of the field is to find sharp upper and lower bounds of the above difference, expressed as a function of the denominator. It appears that these bounds depend on the nature of the real numbers to be approximated: the lower bound for the approximation of a rational number by another rational number is larger than ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Effective Results In Number Theory
For historical reasons and in order to have application to the solution of Diophantine equations, results in number theory have been scrutinised more than in other branches of mathematics to see if their content is effectively computable. Where it is asserted that some list of integers is finite, the question is whether in principle the list could be printed out after a machine computation. Littlewood's result An early example of an ineffective result was J. E. Littlewood's theorem of 1914, that in the prime number theorem the differences of both ψ(''x'') and π(''x'') with their asymptotic estimates change sign infinitely often. In 1933 Stanley Skewes obtained an effective upper bound for the first sign change, now known as Skewes' number. In more detail, writing for a numerical sequence ''f'' (''n''), an ''effective'' result about its changing sign infinitely often would be a theorem including, for every value of ''N'', a value ''M'' > ''N'' such that ''f'' ('' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Continued Fraction
In mathematics, a continued fraction is an expression (mathematics), expression obtained through an iterative process of representing a number as the sum of its integer part and the multiplicative inverse, reciprocal of another number, then writing this other number as the sum of its integer part and another reciprocal, and so on. In a finite continued fraction (or terminated continued fraction), the iteration/recursion is terminated after finitely many steps by using an integer in lieu of another continued fraction. In contrast, an infinite continued fraction is an infinite expression (mathematics), infinite expression. In either case, all integers in the sequence, other than the first, must be positive number, positive. The integers a_i are called the coefficients or terms of the continued fraction. It is generally assumed that the numerator of all of the fractions is 1. If arbitrary values and/or function (mathematics), functions are used in place of one or more of the numerat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Continued Fraction
In mathematics, a continued fraction is an expression (mathematics), expression obtained through an iterative process of representing a number as the sum of its integer part and the multiplicative inverse, reciprocal of another number, then writing this other number as the sum of its integer part and another reciprocal, and so on. In a finite continued fraction (or terminated continued fraction), the iteration/recursion is terminated after finitely many steps by using an integer in lieu of another continued fraction. In contrast, an infinite continued fraction is an infinite expression (mathematics), infinite expression. In either case, all integers in the sequence, other than the first, must be positive number, positive. The integers a_i are called the coefficients or terms of the continued fraction. It is generally assumed that the numerator of all of the fractions is 1. If arbitrary values and/or function (mathematics), functions are used in place of one or more of the numerat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convergent (continued Fraction)
In mathematics, a continued fraction is an expression obtained through an iterative process of representing a number as the sum of its integer part and the reciprocal of another number, then writing this other number as the sum of its integer part and another reciprocal, and so on. In a finite continued fraction (or terminated continued fraction), the iteration/recursion is terminated after finitely many steps by using an integer in lieu of another continued fraction. In contrast, an infinite continued fraction is an infinite expression. In either case, all integers in the sequence, other than the first, must be positive. The integers a_i are called the coefficients or terms of the continued fraction. It is generally assumed that the numerator of all of the fractions is 1. If arbitrary values and/or functions are used in place of one or more of the numerators or the integers in the denominators, the resulting expression is a generalized continued fraction. When it is necessa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
If And Only If
In logic and related fields such as mathematics and philosophy, "if and only if" (shortened as "iff") is a biconditional logical connective between statements, where either both statements are true or both are false. The connective is biconditional (a statement of material equivalence), and can be likened to the standard material conditional ("only if", equal to "if ... then") combined with its reverse ("if"); hence the name. The result is that the truth of either one of the connected statements requires the truth of the other (i.e. either both statements are true, or both are false), though it is controversial whether the connective thus defined is properly rendered by the English "if and only if"—with its pre-existing meaning. For example, ''P if and only if Q'' means that ''P'' is true whenever ''Q'' is true, and the only case in which ''P'' is true is if ''Q'' is also true, whereas in the case of ''P if Q'', there could be other scenarios where ''P'' is true and ''Q'' is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modular Group
In mathematics, the modular group is the projective special linear group of matrices with integer coefficients and determinant 1. The matrices and are identified. The modular group acts on the upper-half of the complex plane by fractional linear transformations, and the name "modular group" comes from the relation to moduli spaces and not from modular arithmetic. Definition The modular group is the group of linear fractional transformations of the upper half of the complex plane, which have the form :z\mapsto\frac, where , , , are integers, and . The group operation is function composition. This group of transformations is isomorphic to the projective special linear group , which is the quotient of the 2-dimensional special linear group over the integers by its center . In other words, consists of all matrices :\begin a & b \\ c & d \end where , , , are integers, , and pairs of matrices and are considered to be identical. The group operation is the usual mult ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Möbius Transformation
In geometry and complex analysis, a Möbius transformation of the complex plane is a rational function of the form f(z) = \frac of one complex variable ''z''; here the coefficients ''a'', ''b'', ''c'', ''d'' are complex numbers satisfying ''ad'' − ''bc'' ≠0. Geometrically, a Möbius transformation can be obtained by first performing stereographic projection from the plane to the unit two-sphere, rotating and moving the sphere to a new location and orientation in space, and then performing stereographic projection (from the new position of the sphere) to the plane. These transformations preserve angles, map every straight line to a line or circle, and map every circle to a line or circle. The Möbius transformations are the projective transformations of the complex projective line. They form a group called the Möbius group, which is the projective linear group PGL(2,C). Together with its subgroups, it has numerous applications in mathematics and physics. Möbius transfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Émile Borel
Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (; 7 January 1871 – 3 February 1956) was a French mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ... and politician. As a mathematician, he was known for his founding work in the areas of measure theory and probability. Biography Borel was born in Saint-Affrique, Aveyron, the son of a Protestant pastor. He studied at the Collège Sainte-Barbe and Lycée Louis-le-Grand before applying to both the École normale supérieure (Paris), École normale supérieure and the École Polytechnique. He qualified in the first position for both and chose to attend the former institution in 1889. That year he also won the concours général, an annual national mathematics competition. After graduating in 1892, he placed first in the agrégati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Hurwitz
Adolf Hurwitz (; 26 March 1859 – 18 November 1919) was a German mathematician who worked on algebra, analysis, geometry and number theory. Early life He was born in Hildesheim, then part of the Kingdom of Hanover, to a Jewish family and died in Zürich, in Switzerland. His father Salomon Hurwitz, a merchant, was not wealthy. Hurwitz's mother, Elise Wertheimer, died when he was three years old. Family records indicate that he had siblings and cousins, but their names have yet to be confirmed except for an older brother, Julius, with whom he developed an arithmetical theory for complex continued fractions circa 1890. Hurwitz entered the in Hildesheim in 1868. He was taught mathematics there by Hermann Schubert. Schubert persuaded Hurwitz's father to allow him to attend university, and arranged for Hurwitz to study with Felix Klein at Munich. Salomon Hurwitz could not afford to send his son to university, but his friend, Mr. Edwards, assisted financially. Educational career Hur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dirichlet's Approximation Theorem
In number theory, Dirichlet's theorem on Diophantine approximation, also called Dirichlet's approximation theorem, states that for any real numbers \alpha and N , with 1 \leq N , there exist integers p and q such that 1 \leq q \leq N and : \left , q \alpha -p \right , \leq \frac < \frac. Here represents the of . This is a fundamental result in , showing that any real number has a sequence of good rational approximations: in fact an immediate consequence is that for a given irrational α, the inequality : is satisfied by infinitely many integers ''p'' and ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baker's Theorem
In transcendental number theory, a mathematical discipline, Baker's theorem gives a lower bound for the absolute value of linear combinations of logarithms of algebraic numbers. The result, proved by , subsumed many earlier results in transcendental number theory and solved a problem posed by Alexander Gelfond nearly fifteen years earlier. Baker used this to prove the transcendence of many numbers, to derive effective bounds for the solutions of some Diophantine equations, and to solve the class number problem of finding all imaginary quadratic fields with class number 1. History To simplify notation, let \mathbb be the set of logarithms to the base ''e'' of nonzero algebraic numbers, that is \mathbb = \left \, where \Complex denotes the set of complex numbers and \overline denotes the algebraic numbers (the algebraic completion of the rational numbers \Q). Using this notation, several results in transcendental number theory become much easier to state. For example the Hermite–L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linear Independence
In the theory of vector spaces, a set of vectors is said to be if there is a nontrivial linear combination of the vectors that equals the zero vector. If no such linear combination exists, then the vectors are said to be . These concepts are central to the definition of dimension. A vector space can be of finite dimension or infinite dimension depending on the maximum number of linearly independent vectors. The definition of linear dependence and the ability to determine whether a subset of vectors in a vector space is linearly dependent are central to determining the dimension of a vector space. Definition A sequence of vectors \mathbf_1, \mathbf_2, \dots, \mathbf_k from a vector space is said to be ''linearly dependent'', if there exist scalars a_1, a_2, \dots, a_k, not all zero, such that :a_1\mathbf_1 + a_2\mathbf_2 + \cdots + a_k\mathbf_k = \mathbf, where \mathbf denotes the zero vector. This implies that at least one of the scalars is nonzero, say a_1\ne 0, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
