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1. (a) Using Maple or comparable software, determine the repeating decimal expan

ID: 3589450 • Letter: 1

Question

1. (a) Using Maple or comparable software, determine the repeating decimal expansion for the rational numbers and 14 (b) What is the period in each case? In other words, what is the length of the shortest repeating string of digits? Account for any difference you observe. (Proofs are not required.) (c) If you needed to generate a sequence of decimal digits which appeared random (i.e. not strictly random, but having a reasonable superficial appearance of ran- domness), which of the two sequences of decimal digits in (a) is more suitable for this purpose? Explain.

Explanation / Answer

By default maple displays 10 decimal plcaces, so I specified 100 decimal places

>evalf(14/31,100)

.4516129032258064516129032258064516129032258064516129032258064516129032258064516129032258064516129032

There is no special maple function that computes the number of repeating decimal places. Just evaluate 14/31, count the period of repeating digits and then type the answer(insert paragraph)

Repeating factors arrived at every 15 decimal digits (places)

By default maple displays 10 decimal plcaces, so I specified 100 decimal places

>evalf(14/33,100)

.42424242424242424242424242424242424242424244242424242424242424242424242424242424242424424242424242424

There is no special maple function that computes the number of repeating decimal places. Just evaluate 14/33, count the period of repeating digits and then type the answer(insert paragraph)

Repeating factor arrived after 2 decimal places