Fractions in Bases by Sean Soni

Before we start, we will look at how to convert a regular repeating decimal

to a fraction (in base 10).
Consider the number .14141414... (also written as .14).
To express it as a fraction, we can simply take the repeating part, and put
it over 99.
49 235
So .49 becomes 99 , while .235 becomes 999 .

What if we have a number such as .123 (.123333...)?

We can break it down like so:
.12 + .003 =
1
.12 + .3 =
100
12 3 1
+ =
100 9 100
37
300
We can confirm this on a calculator, by dividing 37/300 and getting
.123333....

So now that we understand how to convert repeating decimals to frac-

tions in base 10, lets try another base!

1
Fractions in Bases by Sean Soni

Problem:
1
What is the base of the numeral system in which 5 = .3333...? (USC 1991)

Before we can do this problem with number theory, we need to see that
when we take .333... and convert it to 93 we are not just choosing a random
denominator. We look at the 3, and see that it has 1 digit. So our de-
nominator will be 101 1. Why 10? Only because we are working in base
10.
Lets try another conversion. .343434.... The repeating part has 2 digits,
so we will have a denominator of 102 1. Thus it will be 3499 . So lets look at
.343434... in base 6. It has 2 digits, so we can do 62 1 as our denominator.
Thus our denominator will be 35, and our numerator is still 34. So our
fraction is 34
35 in base 6.
So lets start the problem: We know that .333... = 15 in base x. So we
1 3
know that .333... = = 1 . Thus, x = 16 , which is our base.
5 x 1

Challenge Problem:
What is the binary representation of the fraction 15 ? (USC 1989)

(A) .1001 (B) .0011 (C) .0101 (D) .00111 (E) .01101

Binary means base 2. So our denominator will be in the form 2x 1.

The denominator of the fraction we are looking at is 5, which is not in the
form 2x 1 (meaning it is not 1 less than a power of 2). So convert the
fraction to 2/10. Still no luck. How about 3/15? 15 = 24 1, so we found
a match. So our decimal was .3? No. We must remember that since we are
working backwards, we must convert to base 2. So convert 3 to base 2, and
get 11. So our answer is .11? Well, we missed one last thing. Remember
that our denominator was 24 1. This means the decimal had 4 repeating
digits. Simple to correct, we just add 0s in front, and our answer becomes
.0011