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
Irrational number if complex number exponentiation is used). An example that provides a simple constructive proof is The base of the left side is irrational and the right side is rational, so one must prove that the exponent on the left side, formula_17, is irrational. This is so because, by the formula relating logarithms with different bases, which we can assume, for the sake of establishing a contradiction, equals a ratio "m/n" of positive integers. Then formula_19 hence formula_20 hence formula_21 hence formula_22, which is a contradictory pair of prime factorizations and hence violates the fundamental theorem of arithmetic (unique prime factorization).