Re: "frac2" button
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Re: "frac2" button
Thanks to Mika Heiskanen for posting the HP-style algorithm for checking the
match of an arbitrarily-presented decimal value for being one of a list of
certain types of easily describable irrational numbers (the square root of a
rational, a multiple of pi, etc.). This shows that it is sometimes a good idea
to "work both sides of the street".
One fly in the ointment as far as use of this idea in the TI-8x environment
would be the _approximate_ subroutine, as true subroutines are not really
available to the programmer -- you have to bury them in the code or else create
a whole 'nother program and share variables, and all that. But, aside from a
lack of elegance, it would work, even on the TI-83. It wouldn't be hard to
write such an approximate subroutine using the idea of continued fractions.
The big problem is that even if you got the program working slick as slick, it
still wouldn't recognize such commonly-encountered irrational numbers as three
minus the square root of two, or pi squared over six. And you never could
catch all of these, so no point thinking about a "frac3". Too bad!
RWW Taylor
National Technical Institute for the Deaf
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester NY 14623
>>>> The plural of mongoose begins with p. <<<<