Friday, 8 March 2013

irrational numbers - sqrt2notinmathbbQ but ...

Ok, it's easy to prove that prime roots are irrational (i.e.
pQ, if pP)



Consider 2. We can quickly prove that
2Q.




Proof: (by contradiction)



Assume that 2Q



a,bZ such that ab=2(By definition)a2b2=2(By squaring both sides)a2=b22Now consider the prime factorization of both sides. The left handside has an even number of prime factors (this is true of any square).Since 2 is prime, and b2 has an even number of prime factors, The right hand side has an odd number of prime factors.a2b22ab2→←



Easy, right? Ok, consider this:




Let f(a,n) be a function that returns the n^{th} digit to the right of the
decimal place of the number a (in its decimal expansion). So,
f(z,n) = 0,\quad\forall z\in\mathbb{Z},n\in\mathbb{N}.
However, since \sqrt{2} \approx 1.414213562, f(\sqrt{2}, 1) = 4,\;f(\sqrt{2}, 2) = 1
and so on.



This implies that
\displaystyle\sqrt{2} = 1 + \sum_{i=1}^\infty \frac{f(\sqrt{2},i)}{10^i}




Since \mathbb{Q} is closed under addition (i.e. \forall a,b \in \mathbb{Q}, a+b \in \mathbb{Q}) We must conclude
that 1 + \sum_{i=1}^\infty \frac{f(\sqrt{2},i)}{10^i} \in \mathbb{Q}



\therefore \sqrt{2} \in \mathbb{Q}



But we just proved that \therefore \sqrt{2} \not\in \mathbb{Q}



ACK!!



Clearly one of the steps is wrong. My suspicion is this one:




\displaystyle\sqrt{2} = 1 + \sum_{i=1}^\infty \frac{f(\sqrt{2},i)}{10^i}



If so, this is sort of alarming! This implies that irrational numbers (i.e. almost all
numbers on the real line) cannot have a decimal representation! Is this true?

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