Introducing continued fractions

Consider the quadratic equation

Dividing by we can rewrite it as

Now substitute the expression for given by the right-hand side of this equation for in the
denominator on the right-hand side:

We can continue this incestuous procedure indefinitely, to produce a never-ending staircase of

fractions that is a type-setter’s nightmare:

This staircase is an example of a continued fraction. If we return to equation 1 then we can

simply solve the quadratic equation to find the positive solution for that is given by the
continued fraction expansion of equation 4; it is

Picking , we have generated the continued fraction expansion of the golden mean, :

This form inspires us to define a general continued fraction of a number as

To avoid the cumbersome notation we write an expansion of the form equation 8 as

[ ]

Definition: Any expression of the form

is called a continued fraction, and is written

The sign may be supposed to be attached to the ’s, so any continued fraction may be
expressed in the form

where s and s may be positive and negative numbers. The quantities are
called the elements of and the fraction obtained by stopping at any particular stage is called a
convergent. Thus the first, second, third,…, convergents are

 Show that, for the continued fraction

the quantities and are defined by the equations

with the initial values .

Proof: Let denote the convergent of the continued fraction,

So that .

We shall write where .

Observing that may be obtained from by changing into , we have

and so where and .

Proceeding thus we can show that, if and are defined for successive values of by the
equations

then is the th convergent of .

Equations are called the recurrence formulae. It will be found convenient to write

and it will be seen that and , so that equations hold

for .

Converting an ordinary Fraction to a Continued Fraction

Problem: Convert an ordinary fraction to a continued fraction.

Solution:

Consider, the rational number , which is around 4.4624.

So, can be written as

Finally, the fractional part, , is the reciprocal of 7, so its approximation in this scheme, 7, is
exact ( ) and produces the exact expression

for .

The expression is called the continued fraction representation of . This can be

represented by the abbreviated notation = [4; 2, 6, 7].

Converting a Continued Fraction to an ordinary Fraction

Problem: Convert a continued fraction [ ] to an ordinary fraction.

Solution:

[ ]
A continued fraction is an expression of the form

where ai and bi are required to be integers. If bi = 1 for all i the expression is called
a simple continued fraction. If the expression contains a finite number of terms, it is called
a finite continued fraction. If the expression contains an infinite number of terms, it is called
an infinite continued fraction.

Thus, all of the following illustrate valid finite simple continued fractions:

Examples of finite simple continued fractions

Formula Numeric Remarks

2 All integers are a degenerate case

Simplest possible fractional form

First integer may be negative

First integer may be zero

Recurring Continued Fractions:

If , after a certain stage , the elements recur in some order, we have a recurring continued fraction.
The recurring elements form the ' recurring period ' or the cycle , and the non - recurring elements ,
if such exist , form the ' acyclic part of the fraction.
The cycle is usually denoted by putting asterisks under the first and last of the recurring elements,
thus
is denoted by .
Here is the cycle and is the acyclic part.