[Python-Dev] Rational approximation methods (original) (raw)

Scott David Daniels Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org
Sat Jan 19 23:35:50 CET 2008

Jeffrey Yasskin wrote:

The second returns the simplest rational within some distance. For instance, it'll prefer 22/7 over 333/106 if both are close enough. We might call it .simplestwithin() for now. This seems useful for converting from float and displaying results to users, where we prefer readability over accuracy or have reason to believe that a simpler fraction might be more correct. You can use a mediant walk to get to two surrounding fractions w/ some limit, and then return the pair to let the caller choose.

See http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52317 for an imperfect implementation.

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