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Quotient 1.5.3

A quotient may extend off the screen of your calculator, such as when you divide 1 by 7. It turns out, however, that at least some part of what follows the decimal point repeats indefinitely.

This is what I grew up calling a repeating decimal—that is to say, a portion of the decimal repeats itself infinitely as a repetend. As an example, the fraction 1/7 equals 0.142857142857142857142…… In this case, 142857, or any wrapped variant (such as 428571 or 857142), would be the repetend due to its being the smallest repeating chunk.

Quotient enters the scene here. The program writes the quotient of any integer division—to a user-specified level of decimal precision—into a text box, whence it can be copied to the Clipboard, or exported (along with the rest of the calculation parameters) to a text file.

A repetend locator rounds out the program's functionality, employing an algorithm with the ability to determine a repeating end-segment portion in any finite-length string, which the result text box then displays. The only known issue with this feature is that, while determining the repetend of a short quotient string remains fairly fast, it can take a long time to determine that of a longer one. Furthermore, some short strings are slow while other longer ones go quickly. This issue is difficult to avoid, since the algorithm divides the entire string into pieces repeatedly and must process them again each time through.

What's New in Quotient 1.5.3?

  • Fixed a bug that prevented the online help from loading.
  • Made the main window resizable once more.
  • Increased the height of the main window.
  • Added an adjustable slider between the quotient and repetend text views.
  • Rearranged the main window slightly.

General Information

  • Last Modified: 5 March 2010
  • Compatibility: Universal Binary; requires Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"
  • License: BSD

Click here to download Quotient 1.5.3. Click here to download the source code.

The previous version of the program, Quotient 1.5, can be downloaded here. The source code can be downloaded here.