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  Other Topics (2)

  Powers of 2
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  Fractions
> Fractions in Base 2
  Fractions in Base N

Fractions in Base 2

Of all the number things I've written about here, the following is almost certainly the most useless.

When you learn about other bases in algebra, you invariably hear about them only as a way of representing integers. So, I was very pleased with myself when I realized you could have fractions in other bases, too, and I soon worked out lots of expansions, including, I think, most of the ones below.

111
2100.1
3110.01
41000.01
51010.0011
61100.001
71110.001
810000.001
910010.000111
1010100.00011
1110110.0001011101
1211000.0001
1311010.000100111011
1411100.0001
1511110.0001
16100000.0001
17100010.00001111
18100100.0000111
19100110.000011010111100101
20101000.000011
21101010.000011
22101100.00001011101
23101110.00001011001
24110000.00001
25110010.00001010001111010111
26110100.0000100111011
27110110.000010010111101101
28111000.00001
29111010.0000100011010011110111001011
30111100.00001

There are all kinds of patterns to be seen here, far more, I think, than are visible in base 10. I'm not sure why that is … maybe because there are only two digits, instead of a whole bewildering variety, or maybe just because there are so many more powers of two.

So, here are some obvious patterns. (I'll use k = 5 in the examples.)

  • 1/2k has the form 0.00001.
  • 1/(2k−1) has the same form, but repeating: 0.00001.
  • 1/(2k+1) has a form twice as long: 0.0000011111.

Those last two are actually instances of more general patterns.

  • The expansion of a fraction of the form m/(2k−1) is simply the number m written in binary and then converted to a repeating sequence of length k. (See Fractions in Base N for more information.) The expansion of 1/21, for example, can be thought of as 3/63, i.e., 3/(26−1).
  • The expansion of a fraction of the form m/(2k+1) is a repeating sequence of length 2k, where the first half is the number m−1 written in binary and the second half is its first complement, which in this case is also known as the ones complement. (See Other Denominators for more information.) The expansion of 1/11, for example, can be thought of as 3/33, i.e., 3/(25+1).

Throw in the beyond-obvious rule that the expansion of 1/(2n) is the expansion of 1/n with an extra leading zero, and we've covered most of the entries above.

Actually, that rule plus the first general pattern are sufficient to explain literally everything, but the way I figure it, that doesn't count. I mean, the fact that 1/19 is equal to 13797/262143 is not what I'd call a pattern one would notice. (But, I might consider 1/19 and 1/27 to be examples of the second general pattern, based on the nice fact that 19×27 = 513.)

In the same way, the fact that 1/29 is equal to 565/16385 doesn't count as an example of the second general pattern. Even so, however, you can still look at it and see that the second half is the complement of the first half. So, if you ask me, I'd say that's another pattern; for more information, see Complementary Parts.

What I really like about the expansions of fractions in binary is the way the digits shift and combine and interlock … not just for numbers like 1/29 where the halves are complements, but also for simple numbers like 1/9. The expansion of 1/9, as you can see above, is 0.000111 (7/63). What happens if we multiply that by 9, or, rather, by 1001? Well, multiplying by 1001 is exactly the same as multiplying by 1000 + 1; and multiplying by 1000 is the same as shifting left by three places; so what we're doing is adding 1/9 to a shifted copy of itself, like so.

0.111000111000 …
0.000111000111 …

The result, 0.111111, is just another name for 0.1, or 1.0.

By the way, you can use the exact same process of shifting and adding to multiply any two binary numbers. In fact, back on the 6502, you had to use that process (or something equivalent), because the processor didn't have a built-in multiply operation. Later processors did have multiply operations, but you could tell they were just implementing the process internally, because the instruction would take vastly longer than other things.

Now, another way to look at the example of 1/9 is to see it as a fact about whole numbers: 111 × 1001 = 111111, just as 25 × 101 = 2525 in decimal. Conversely, if we have a binary number made up of a composite number of 1s, we can always factor it in a nice way, or sometimes in several nice ways. Here are the first few such numbers.

4111111101
61111111110101
1111001
811111111111010101
111110001
91111111111111001001
10111111111111101010101
11111100001
121111111111111110101010101
1111001001001
1111100010001
1111111000001

The ones with eight and twelve digits also have factorizations with three terms.

8111111111110110001
1211111111111111101100010001
11101011000001
11110011000001

Probably this all looks very stupid to you, but to me it is just fascinating to see the whole structure of prime and composite numbers repeat itself in the microcosm of numbers consisting only of 1s … which themselves are numbers, prime or composite as may be. Actually, speaking of which … if instead of “the number consisting of k 1s” we say “2k−1”, then suddenly we're talking about Mersenne numbers, and the factorizations above are just instances of the well-known fact that you can't possibly get a Mersenne prime from a composite k.

(You don't always get a Mersenne prime from a prime k, either, but in that case the factorization is not a nice one like above.)

Now I'll tell you a funny thing. Although ostensibly I've been talking only about binary numbers, in fact the nice factorizations work in any base! And, they are not entirely academic … if, for example, you want to know which fractions 1/n in decimal have repeating sequences of length 4, you need to factor 9999, which of course is 9×1111, hence 32×11×101.

What's more, the nice factorizations work even if the base isn't specified. If you're working in base b, then 11, for example, is equal to b + 1, and the fact that 1111 can be written as 11×101 translates to

b3 + b2 + b + 1 = (b + 1)(b2 + 1).

In other words, nice factorizations are factorizations of polynomials.

I know I'm getting way off topic, here, but let me point out one more thing about polynomials. Polynomials, like integers, have well-defined factors. So, in the table above, although the two different factorizations of 111111 are complete as far as nice factorizations are concerned, they can't possibly be complete as polynomials. The missing link is that 11 is a factor of 1001:

b3 + 1 = (b + 1)(b2 − b + 1).

Doesn't that make you want to have a digit that represents −1?

 

  See Also

  Associative Hooks
  Decimal Expansions (Section)
  Expansion Calculator
  History and Other Stuff
  In Other Bases
  Powers of N
  Repeat Length
  Repunits
  Sharps and Flats
  What Is Memorable?

@ April (2004)