Kempner number

Mathematical constant; sum of 1 / 2^2^n From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Kempner number[1] is the sum of the series

RationalityTranscendental
Decimal0.81642150902189314370... (sequence A007404 in the OEIS)
Continued fraction (linear)[0;1,4,2,4,4,6,4,2,4,6,...] (sequence A007400 in the OEIS)
Binary0.11010001000000010000... (sequence A036987 in the OEIS)
Quick facts Rationality, Representations ...
Kempner number
RationalityTranscendental
Representations
Decimal0.81642150902189314370... (sequence A007404 in the OEIS)
Continued fraction (linear)[0;1,4,2,4,4,6,4,2,4,6,...] (sequence A007400 in the OEIS)
Binary0.11010001000000010000... (sequence A036987 in the OEIS)
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It is named after Aubrey Kempner, who proved it transcendental in 1916.[2] It is an example of a number easy to prove transcendental which is not a Liouville number.[1]:§1

Properties

By definition, the binary expansion of the Kempner number has zeroes everywhere except at places which are powers of two:

κ = 0.110100010000000100000000000000010000000000000000000000000000000100... (base two.)

Since the first proof of transcendence by Kempner, many other proofs have been given; see the references.[1][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

Jeffrey Shallit has proven that it has a simple continued fraction expansion, obtainable by the following construction:[10]:Theorem 1

  1. Start with the partial expansion [0, 1, 3].
  2. If the partial expansion is [a, b, ..., y, z], replace it by [a, b, ..., y, z + 1, z 1, y, ..., b].
  3. If this generated a zero, replace [..., a, 0, b, ...] by [..., a + b, ...].
  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 indefinitely.

This generates the expansion (sequence A007400 in the OEIS)

After the first partial quotients, the remainders are all 2, 4 or 6. Since this continued fraction has bounded partial quotients, the Kempner number has irrationality measure 2.

References

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