decimal to fraction conversion

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Delany MacDonald
Delany MacDonald on 22 Mar 2016
Commented: Nisar Ali on 9 Mar 2020
I am given the number of women in an array in a new variable that equals 74. I am also given the total number of students in a new variable that equals to 144. I did the math on Matlab
fractionWoman =
(totalWoman./ totalStudents);
the answer is .513889. How do i make this into fraction? I have tried to rat function but it gives me multiple answers so i am confused.
  1 Comment
Nisar Ali
Nisar Ali on 9 Mar 2020
1170/1351
>> format
>> x
x =
0.8660
and back to /
format rational
thank you

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Answers (4)

Roger Stafford
Roger Stafford on 22 Mar 2016
The 'rat' function returns with an output in the form of continued fractions. To see it as a single fraction, use "format rat".

MHN
MHN on 23 Mar 2016
format rational
74./ 144
or if you would like to have numbers
format rational
[num, dem] = rat(74./ 144);
num./dem

Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 22 Mar 2016
[num, dem] = rat(totalWoman./ totalStudents);
The fraction is then num / dem .
The output of rat is different when there are two outputs than when there is only one.
  7 Comments
Steven Lord
Steven Lord on 9 Oct 2018
Let's generate the numerator and denominator for a rational approximation to pi.
[num, den] = rat(pi);
We can build a filename using sprintf, num2str, or if you're using a sufficiently recent version of MATLAB string operations.
filename = sprintf('VEC%d_%d.mat', num, den)
filename2 = ['VEC' num2str(num) '_' num2str(den) '.mat']
filename3 = "VEC" + num + "_" + den + ".mat"
I'm going to add the name of the temporary directory tempdir to the start of the filename, so I don't write a file to your current directory.
thefullpath = fullfile(tempdir, filename)
Save a MAT-file there.
save(thefullpath, 'num')
Does it contain the variable num?
whos('-file', thefullpath)
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 9 Oct 2018
Instead of going the route
(dynamic variable name somehow goes here) = value
save(thefullpath, dynamic variable name goes here)
to get the resulting variable name stored in the file designated by the variable thefullpath, you can instead use something like
fieldname = sprintf('VEC%d', num);
outstruct.(fieldname) = value;
save(thefullpath, '-struct', 'outstruct')
When the -struct keyword is used, instead of the struct itself being saved, the individual fields of the struct are saved as individual variables in the .mat .

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Kothandaraman Thanukodi
Kothandaraman Thanukodi on 16 Sep 2018
Edited: Walter Roberson on 16 Sep 2018
format rat
1.5+4.25

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