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As rewards of reading two great papers of Hermite from 1873, we trace the historical origin of the integral Niven used in his well-known proof of the irrationality of $\pi$, uncover a rarely acknowledged simple proof by Hermite of the…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2023-07-05 Li Zhou

We point out that the proof of irrationality of $\pi$ by Niven can be modified to a proof by contraposition. As a warm-up, we also give a proof of irrationality of $\sqrt{2}$ and $\sqrt{3}$ in a similar way.

History and Overview · Mathematics 2015-12-02 Akira Ushijima

We use recurrences of integrals to give new and elementary proofs of the irrationality of pi, tan(r) for all nonzero rational r, and cos(r) for all nonzero rational r^2. Immediate consequences to other values of the elementary…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2009-11-20 Li Zhou , Lubomir Markov

We use a variant of Salikhov's ingenious proof that the irrationality measure of $\pi$ is at most $7.606308\dots$ to prove that, in fact, it is at most $7.103205334137\dots$. Accompanying Maple package: While this article has a fully…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2020-11-11 Doron Zeilberger , Wadim Zudilin

It is a classical fact that the irrationality of a number $\xi\in\mathbb R$ follows from the existence of a sequence $p_n/q_n$ with integral $p_n$ and $q_n$ such that $q_n\xi-p_n\ne0$ for all $n$ and $q_n\xi-p_n\to0$ as $n\to\infty$. In…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2018-08-06 Wadim Zudilin

In the literature, we have various ways of proving irrationality of a real number. In this survey article, we shall emphasize on a particular criterion to prove irrationality. This is called nice approximation of a number by a sequence of…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2022-06-28 Tirthankar Bhattacharyya , Soham Bakshi , Arka Das

Given a rational number $r$ such that $2r$ is not an integer, we prove that $\tan^2(r\pi)$ is irrational unless it is equal to $0$, $1$, $3$ or $\frac{1}{3}$, using only basic trigonometry and the Rational Root Theorem. Moreover, we deduce…

History and Overview · Mathematics 2022-04-06 Lionel Ponton

To account for the first proof of existence of an irrational magnitude, historians of science as well as commentators of Aristotle refer to the texts on the incommensurability of the diagonal in Prior Analytics, since they are the most…

History and Overview · Mathematics 2014-08-12 Salomon Ofman

In this work, we prove the irrationality of $\pi$ based on the nested radicals with roots of $2$ of kind $c_k = \sqrt{2 + c_{k - 1}}$ and $c_0 = 0$. Sample computations showing how the rational approximation tends to $\pi$ with increasing…

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2026-04-07 Sanjar M. Abrarov , Rehan Siddiqui , Rajinder Kumar Jagpal , Brendan M. Quine

In this small note, we provide an elementary proof of the fact that infinitely many odd zeta values are irrational. For the first time, this celebrated theorem been proven by Rivoal and Ball--Rivoal. The original proof uses highly…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2018-02-27 Johannes Sprang

In this short note we give an alternative proof of Glivenko's Theorem, stating that a formula $\phi$ is provable in classical propositional logic if and only if $\neg\neg\phi$ is provable in intuitionistic propositional logic. We work in…

Logic · Mathematics 2015-10-27 Pedro Sánchez Terraf

This note shows that the product $e \pi$ of the natural base $e$ and the circle number $\pi$ is an irrational number.

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2023-01-19 N. A. Carella

We give two elementary proofs, at a level understandable by students with only pre-calculus knowledge of Algebra, of the well known fact that an irreducible irrational n-th root of a positive rational number cannot be solution of a…

History and Overview · Mathematics 2009-08-04 S. A. Belbas

Wittgenstein's paradoxical theses that unproved propositions are meaningless, proofs form new concepts and rules, and contradictions are of limited concern, led to a variety of interpretations, most of them centered on the rule-following…

History and Overview · Mathematics 2022-06-24 Sergiy Koshkin

We show that every irrational number is a sum of two real numbers with diverging partial quotients. The proof is constructive. The key towards these results is an algorithm which was recently developed by Nikita Shulga, and our study of…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2025-07-08 Dmitry Gayfulin , Erez Nesharim

There are only aleph-zero rational numbers, while there are 2 to the power aleph-zero real numbers. Hence the probability that a randomly chosen real number would be rational is 0. Yet proving rigorously that any specific, natural, real…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2021-01-22 Robert Dougherty-Bliss , Christoph Koutschan , Doron Zeilberger

We survay some nice result concerning the irrationals with a metric space point of view.Here is ofcourse nothing new may be or an expert in this field.

History and Overview · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Pratip Chakraborty

In this paper we propose a new method for determination of the two-term Machin-like formula for pi with arbitrarily small arguments of the arctangent function. This approach excludes irrational numbers in computation and leads to a…

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2017-04-18 S. M. Abrarov , B. M. Quine

The proof of the irrationality of Zeta(5) is a long standing open problem, but here only the case of Zeta(4) = (Pi^4)/90 is considered. The present paper suggests an approach for the irrationality of Zeta(4) along the lines of those known…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2014-06-18 Dirk Huylebrouck

This short "education note" was inspired by Zvi Artstein's masterpiece Mathematics and the Real World, the Remarkable Role of Evolution in the Making of Mathematics (p. 53, and p. 400)

History and Overview · Mathematics 2014-10-10 Doron Zeilberger
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