In the history of mathematics, decimal notation is relatively recent: probably introduced by Arab mathematicians, it was independently popularized by the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin (1548–1620). It very quickly became indispensable. Today, with digital calculators in use, what would we do without it?
Before decimal notation
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Before that, fractions were used. The Egyptians, for example, would write the number 2.75 (in modern notation) as 2 + 1/2 + 1/4. This type of notation survived until the 16th century. But how can we represent irrational numbers, which by definition cannot be written as fractions? This is where continued fractions come in!
Continued-fraction notation is connected with the Euclidean algorithm.
The idea is to represent a number x in the form
