Multiplicative Inverse - Reciprocals of Irrational Numbers

Reciprocals of Irrational Numbers

Every number excluding zero has a reciprocal, and reciprocals of certain irrational numbers often can prove useful for reasons linked to the irrational number in question. Examples of this are the reciprocal of e which is special because no other positive number can produce a lower number when put to the power of itself, and the golden ratio's reciprocal which, being roughly 0.6180339887, is exactly one less than the golden ratio and in turn illustrates the uniqueness of the number.

There are an infinite number of irrational reciprocal pairs that differ by an integer (giving the curious effect that the pairs share their infinite mantissa). These pairs can be found by simplifying n+√(n2+1) for any integer n, and taking the reciprocal.

Read more about this topic:  Multiplicative Inverse

Famous quotes containing the words irrational and/or numbers:

    It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.
    Northrop Frye (b. 1912)

    All experience teaches that, whenever there is a great national establishment, employing large numbers of officials, the public must be reconciled to support many incompetent men; for such is the favoritism and nepotism always prevailing in the purlieus of these establishments, that some incompetent persons are always admitted, to the exclusion of many of the worthy.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)