General Question

imnottellingu's avatar

Can you help me understand this better?

Asked by imnottellingu (493points) October 6th, 2014

I had the following question on a test.
The square root of five belongs to what specific number set? Justify your reasoning.
I got the question wrong and I was hoping you could help me understand it better.

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6 Answers

zenvelo's avatar

It’s an irrational number. It cannot be put into the form x/y where x and y are integers.

Winter_Pariah's avatar

It’s belongs with irrational numbers as there is no way to express that number except as the square root of 5. No fraction can be used to express it or complete decimal (it goes on forever without a pattern which is characteristic of irrational numbers. Pi is another example of an irrational number). Curious to know, what was your answer?

Ninja’d

flutherother's avatar

They may have wanted a proof that square root of 5 is irrational which isn’t too hard

Response moderated (Unhelpful)
dxs's avatar

It’s an irrational number, and it belongs to the set of real numbers.

√(5) ∈ ℝ

imnottellingu's avatar

Thank you for all the answers. You were very helpful. It’s a lot clearer for me now.
@flutherother thanks for the link.

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