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real number, in mathematics, a quantity that can be expressed as an infinite decimal expansion. Real numbers are used in measurements of continuously varying quantities such as size and time, in contrast to the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, …, arising from counting. The word real distinguishes them from the complex numbers involving the symbol i, or √(−1) , used to simplify the mathematical interpretation of effects such as those occurring in electrical phenomena. The real numbers include the positive and negative integers and fractions (or rational numbers) and also the irrational numbers. The irrational numbers have decimal expansions that do not repeat themselves, in contrast to the rational numbers, the expansions of which always contain a digit or group of digits that repeats itself, as 1/6 = 0.16666… or 2/7 = 0.285714285714…. The decimal formed as 0.42442444244442… has no regularly repeating group and is thus irrational.
The most familiar irrational numbers are algebraic numbers, which are the roots of algebraic equations with integer coefficients. For example, the solution to the equation x2 − 2 = 0 is an algebraic irrational number, indicated by √2. Some numbers, such as π and e, are not the solutions of any such algebraic equation and are thus called transcendental irrational numbers. These numbers can often be represented as an infinite sum of fractions determined in some regular way, indeed the decimal expansion is one such sum.
The real numbers can be characterized by the important mathematical property of completeness, meaning that every nonempty set that has an upper bound has a smallest such bound, a property not possessed by the rational numbers. For example, the set of all rational numbers the squares of which are less than 2 has no smallest upper bound, because √2 is not a rational number. The irrational and rational numbers are both infinitely numerous, but the infinity of irrationals is “greater” than the infinity of rationals, in the sense that the rationals can be paired off with a subset of the irrationals, while the reverse pairing is not possible.
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