Suppose we have a sequence ${x_n}$ that converges to some limit, say $\pi$. How do we compute out the decimal expansion of $\pi$ from that sequence? How could the epsilon definition help us here? What are some considerations to have the decimal expansion of the number is not unique?
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Slightly nervous of downvotes, and I think this is very trivial to see from the definition, but it was not something obvious to me, and let me appreciate a lot more the definition of real number in terms of equivalence class of convergent sequences after thinking of this – Clemens Bartholdy May 05 '24 at 06:02
1 Answers
For the case of real numbers with unique expansions:
It seems so this sort of thing is very easy to answer once we have a real between the epsilon and the sequence index.
Let us recall the definition, if for any $\epsilon >0$, we have an $N$ such that for all $n>N$, we have that $|x_n -L| < \epsilon$.
If we were to put that epsilon is $\frac{1}{10^1}$, then it would mean that would give us an $N$ for which, the sequence terms agree to the limit upto ones place.
And, if we choose it to be $\frac{1}{10^2}$ the terms of the sequence after the index $N$ would be right upto first decimal digit
Similarly, if we choose epsilon to be $\frac{1}{10^{i+1}}$ and find the corresponding $N$ from that we would find all the the numbers which agree to our limit upto $i$ decimal places.
What's interesting is, say we were in another base, say 2 maybe, then we could use similar procedure by considering $\frac{1}{2^i}$
Note: A given real number may have many decimal expansions, but for a given sequence that converges to it, it sho
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Not sure I am following. If the true number is $.1999999990$, say, then it will be difficult to decide if the first entry is $1$ or $2$. – lulu May 05 '24 at 06:09
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@trystwithfreedom I don't think that you have. With lulu's example, even with $\epsilon = \frac{1}{10^7}$ we don't know the value of the first digit. – badjohn May 05 '24 at 16:06