On 4/11/07, Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> People, myself included, find rational fractions harder to grasp. E.g. 1.4
> is easier on the eye than 7/5, or especially
> 70000000000000001/50000000000000001
>
Unless you really want that exact rational, the intuitive way to represent
that number might be
7/5 - 8*10^-18 + a smidgen
or 7/5 + 2/250000000000000005 <<< how many zeroes was that?
or 7/5 - 2/(10^18/4+5)
or 7/5 - 8/(10^18 + 20) <<< this is what I translate the above
to....
Those are surely closer to how we want to think about that number in many
cases....