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ContinuedFraction broken?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg21439] ContinuedFraction broken?
  • From: dougn_NOspam at gte.net (Doug Nelson)
  • Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 00:20:47 -0500 (EST)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I've been using Mathematica 4.0 for a couple of weeks now (meaning I'm a 
newbie) and have discovered what I think may be a bug in the ContinuedFraction 
built-in function.

In[116]:=
ContinuedFraction[0.9]

Out[116]=
{0, 1}                                     * incorrect *

In[120]:=
ContinuedFraction[0.90000000001]

Out[120]=
{0, 1, 9}                                  * correct *

In[121]:=
ContinuedFraction[9/10]

Out[121]=
{0, 1, 9}                                  * correct *

The docs state that 0.9 is expanded to cover the precision of the input 
(but it's not going far enough).   The results are all the same if you 
specify a number of terms (say  ",20]").

Is this somehow pilot error?
Doug


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