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Displaying Continued Fractions and Nested Surds "properly"

David Schilling
Posted 11 years ago

Hi. I'm new to Mathematica, so apologies for the newbie question.

How do I get Mathematica to display continued fractions or nested surds the way you normally would see them?

Nest[1 + 1/# &, "...", 7]

Nest[1 + Sqrt[#] &, "...", 10]

Both end up showing the "+1"s on the "wrong" side of the result. That is, normally when you see these sorts of equations, they start with "1 + " and then have the rest of the nested formula.

I'm teaching a class on the Fibonacci Sequence and Golden Ratio, and would like them to display the way students will most often see them.
POSTED BY: David Schilling
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POSTED BY: David Reiss
David Schilling
David Schilling
Posted 11 years ago

Thanks. That's what the problem is. I like the look of TraditionalForm more for many things, which is why I set it to be the default. Perhaps this should be considered a bug in TraditionalForm? Traditionally no one would write them the backwards way, after all!
POSTED BY: David Schilling

My cells are in Standard Form. If I change them to TraditionalForm then they have the opposite behavior that you are noticing. That also explains the TeXForm result--presumably, and sensibly, the TEeXForm of an expression is based on the TraditionalForm version.

I only very rarely use TraditionalForm as a formatting choice for Mathematica expressions....
POSTED BY: David Reiss
David Schilling
David Schilling
Posted 11 years ago

Odd. I wonder if it might be version dependant? I have Mathematica 10.0.0.0. Here's what I see with output cells set to TraditionalForm in my preferences. Also TeXForm is just like yours.

Mathematica 10 display of nested functions

If I type 

Nest[1 + Sqrt[#] &, "...", 10] // TreeForm

and hover over the topmost node, interestingly the tooltip shows it the way you would expect.

Mathematica 10 tooltip display of //TreeForm

Any suggestions how to get it to behave the way I'd like? Thanks!
POSTED BY: David Schilling
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