Introduction to fractions using equivalence class1

Aashish Loknath Panigrahi

In mathematics and most of the fields, we generally come across a lot of fractions like
1
2
or xy .Here we are going to understand the concept of fractions by constructing Q
as all the fractions Q and we will understand this equivalence class and this will
give us an idea about fractions in the perspective of set theory.

Lets consider That you are constructing rational numbers for the first
time using natural numbers and so we dont have any idea about the division
operator and we are going to use this idea as a leverage.

And lets understand it by an example .So lets consider that its your birth-
day. Hooray ! and theres a cake and lets call our cake C1 and lets assume
your cake has to be distributed in between 2 other people and you and if you
want the distribute your cake equally then everyone would get 13 rd of the entire
cake.

Figure 1: A cake divided into 31 and 26 parts

But we can also distribute the cake in 62 or 92 or 12

4
and the list goes on ....
.But as are constructing rational numbers using natural numbers hence we dont
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1
understand what 13 or any other fraction stands for and soo we can represent 31
as a set (1,3) and similarly we can represent 26 as a set (2,6) and hence we can
n
represent all fractions of the form 3n as n,3n.

n
Now, lets consider a set ( 13 , 62 , 93 , 12
4
, ...... 3n , ...till).

So, we can represent this set by the set (1,3),(2,6),(3,9),.....(n,3n),.....till

and this set is called as an equivalence class and infact we can represent any
fraction pq in thr form of an equivalence class.

Now, lets give a look at how we defined a Rational number -

Q= pq such that p,q Q and q 6= 0.
But we now know that pq is equivalent to (p,q). Hence we can define the Q as -

Q= pq such that p,q Q and q 6= 0 where pq is equivalent to the equivalent

class (p,q) s.t. ( p 1 ,q 1 ) (p 2 , q 2 ) when p1 *q2 =p2 *q1 .

So, Now we have a perspective of fractions on the basis of equivalence class

and set theory.