Irrational number number to ratios of continuous magnitude. In his commentary on Book 10 of the "Elements", the Persian mathematician Al-Mahani (d. 874/884) examined and classified quadratic irrationals and cubic irrationals. He provided definitions for rational and irrational magnitudes, which he treated as irrational numbers. He dealt with them freely but explains them in geometric terms as follows: In contrast to Euclid's concept of magnitudes as lines, Al-Mahani considered integers and fractions as rational magnitudes, and square roots and cube roots as irrational magnitudes. He also introduced an arithmetical approach to the concept of irrationality, as he attributes the following to irrational
Proof that e is irrational between 2 and 3: We then analyze a blown-up difference "x" of the series representing "e" and its strictly smaller partial sum, which approximates the limiting value "e". By choosing the magnifying factor to be the factorial of "b", the fraction ⁄ and the partial sum are turned into integers, hence "x" must be a positive integer. However, the fast convergence of the series representation implies that the magnified approximation error "x" is still strictly smaller than 1. From this contradiction we deduce that "e" is irrational. Suppose that "e" is a rational number. Then there exist positive integers "a"