# Multiplicative inverse

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In mathematics, a multiplicative inverse or reciprocal for a number x, denoted by 1/x or x1, is a number which when multiplied by x yields the multiplicative identity, 1. The multiplicative inverse of a fraction a/b is b/a. For the multiplicative inverse of a real number, divide 1 by the number. For example, the reciprocal of 5 is one fifth (1/5 or 0.2), and the reciprocal of 0.25 is 1 divided by 0.25, or 4. The reciprocal function, the function f(x) that maps x to 1/x, is one of the simplest examples of a function which is its own inverse (an involution).

Mathematics includes the study of such topics as quantity, structure, space, and change.

Multiplication is one of the four elementary mathematical operations of arithmetic; with the others being addition, subtraction and division.

In mathematics, a rational number is any number that can be expressed as the quotient or fraction p/q of two integers, a numerator p and a non-zero denominator q. Since q may be equal to 1, every integer is a rational number. The set of all rational numbers, often referred to as "the rationals", the field of rationals or the field of rational numbers is usually denoted by a boldface Q ; it was thus denoted in 1895 by Giuseppe Peano after quoziente, Italian for "quotient".

## Contents

The term reciprocal was in common use at least as far back as the third edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1797) to describe two numbers whose product is 1; geometrical quantities in inverse proportion are described as reciprocall in a 1570 translation of Euclid's Elements . [1]

The Encyclopædia Britannica, formerly published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It was written by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition.

Euclid, sometimes given the name Euclid of Alexandria to distinguish him from Euclides of Megara, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "founder of geometry" or the "father of geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I. His Elements is one of the most influential works in the history of mathematics, serving as the main textbook for teaching mathematics from the time of its publication until the late 19th or early 20th century. In the Elements, Euclid deduced the theorems of what is now called Euclidean geometry from a small set of axioms. Euclid also wrote works on perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, number theory, and rigor.

The Elements is a mathematical treatise consisting of 13 books attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt c. 300 BC. It is a collection of definitions, postulates, propositions, and mathematical proofs of the propositions. The books cover plane and solid Euclidean geometry, elementary number theory, and incommensurable lines. Elements is the oldest extant large-scale deductive treatment of mathematics. It has proven instrumental in the development of logic and modern science, and its logical rigor was not surpassed until the 19th century.

In the phrase multiplicative inverse, the qualifier multiplicative is often omitted and then tacitly understood (in contrast to the additive inverse). Multiplicative inverses can be defined over many mathematical domains as well as numbers. In these cases it can happen that abba; then "inverse" typically implies that an element is both a left and right inverse.

In mathematics, the additive inverse of a number a is the number that, when added to a, yields zero. This number is also known as the opposite (number), sign change, and negation. For a real number, it reverses its sign: the opposite to a positive number is negative, and the opposite to a negative number is positive. Zero is the additive inverse of itself.

In abstract algebra, the idea of an inverse element generalises concepts of a negation in relation to addition, and a reciprocal in relation to multiplication. The intuition is of an element that can 'undo' the effect of combination with another given element. While the precise definition of an inverse element varies depending on the algebraic structure involved, these definitions coincide in a group.

The notation f−1 is sometimes also used for the inverse function of the function f, which is not in general equal to the multiplicative inverse. For example, the multiplicative inverse 1/(sin x) = (sin x)−1 is the cosecant of x, and not the inverse sine of x denoted by sin−1x or arcsin x. Only for linear maps are they strongly related (see below). The terminology difference reciprocal versus inverse is not sufficient to make this distinction, since many authors prefer the opposite naming convention, probably for historical reasons (for example in French, the inverse function is preferably called bijection réciproque).

In mathematics, an inverse function is a function that "reverses" another function: if the function f applied to an input x gives a result of y, then applying its inverse function g to y gives the result x, and vice versa, i.e., f(x) = y if and only if g(y) = x.

In mathematics, the inverse trigonometric functions are the inverse functions of the trigonometric functions. Specifically, they are the inverses of the sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant, and cosecant functions, and are used to obtain an angle from any of the angle's trigonometric ratios. Inverse trigonometric functions are widely used in engineering, navigation, physics, and geometry.

French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) has largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French.

## Examples and counterexamples

In the real numbers, zero does not have a reciprocal because no real number multiplied by 0 produces 1 (the product of any number with zero is zero). With the exception of zero, reciprocals of every real number are real, reciprocals of every rational number are rational, and reciprocals of every complex number are complex. The property that every element other than zero has a multiplicative inverse is part of the definition of a field, of which these are all examples. On the other hand, no integer other than 1 and −1 has an integer reciprocal, and so the integers are not a field.

In mathematics, division by zero is division where the divisor (denominator) is zero. Such a division can be formally expressed as a/0 where a is the dividend (numerator). In ordinary arithmetic, the expression has no meaning, as there is no number which, when multiplied by 0, gives a, and so division by zero is undefined. Since any number multiplied by zero is zero, the expression 0/0 is also undefined; when it is the form of a limit, it is an indeterminate form. Historically, one of the earliest recorded references to the mathematical impossibility of assigning a value to a/0 is contained in George Berkeley's criticism of infinitesimal calculus in 1734 in The Analyst.

In mathematics, a real number is a value of a continuous quantity that can represent a distance along a line. The adjective real in this context was introduced in the 17th century by René Descartes, who distinguished between real and imaginary roots of polynomials. The real numbers include all the rational numbers, such as the integer −5 and the fraction 4/3, and all the irrational numbers, such as 2. Included within the irrationals are the transcendental numbers, such as π (3.14159265...). In addition to measuring distance, real numbers can be used to measure quantities such as time, mass, energy, velocity, and many more.

A complex number is a number that can be expressed in the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers, and i is a solution of the equation x2 = −1. Because no real number satisfies this equation, i is called an imaginary number. For the complex number a + bi, a is called the real part, and b is called the imaginary part. Despite the historical nomenclature "imaginary", complex numbers are regarded in the mathematical sciences as just as "real" as the real numbers, and are fundamental in many aspects of the scientific description of the natural world.

In modular arithmetic, the modular multiplicative inverse of a is also defined: it is the number x such that ax  1 (mod n). This multiplicative inverse exists if and only if a and n are coprime. For example, the inverse of 3 modulo 11 is 4 because 4 · 3  1 (mod 11). The extended Euclidean algorithm may be used to compute it.

In mathematics, modular arithmetic is a system of arithmetic for integers, where numbers "wrap around" upon reaching a certain value—the modulus. The modern approach to modular arithmetic was developed by Carl Friedrich Gauss in his book Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, published in 1801.

In mathematics, in particular the area of number theory, a modular multiplicative inverse of an integer a is an integer x such that the product ax is congruent to 1 with respect to the modulus m. In the standard notation of modular arithmetic this congruence is written as

In logic and related fields such as mathematics and philosophy, if and only if is a biconditional logical connective between statements.

The sedenions are an algebra in which every nonzero element has a multiplicative inverse, but which nonetheless has divisors of zero, i.e. nonzero elements x, y such that xy = 0.

A square matrix has an inverse if and only if its determinant has an inverse in the coefficient ring. The linear map that has the matrix A1 with respect to some base is then the reciprocal function of the map having A as matrix in the same base. Thus, the two distinct notions of the inverse of a function are strongly related in this case, while they must be carefully distinguished in the general case (as noted above).

The trigonometric functions are related by the reciprocal identity: the cotangent is the reciprocal of the tangent; the secant is the reciprocal of the cosine; the cosecant is the reciprocal of the sine.

A ring in which every nonzero element has a multiplicative inverse is a division ring; likewise an algebra in which this holds is a division algebra.

## Complex numbers

As mentioned above, the reciprocal of every nonzero complex number z = a + bi is complex. It can be found by multiplying both top and bottom of 1/z by its complex conjugate ${\displaystyle {\bar {z}}=a-bi}$ and using the property that ${\displaystyle z{\bar {z}}=\|z\|^{2}}$, the absolute value of z squared, which is the real number a2 + b2:

${\displaystyle {\frac {1}{z}}={\frac {\bar {z}}{z{\bar {z}}}}={\frac {\bar {z}}{\|z\|^{2}}}={\frac {a-bi}{a^{2}+b^{2}}}={\frac {a}{a^{2}+b^{2}}}-{\frac {b}{a^{2}+b^{2}}}i.}$

In particular, if ||z||=1 (z has unit magnitude), then ${\displaystyle 1/z={\bar {z}}}$. Consequently, the imaginary units, ±i, have additive inverse equal to multiplicative inverse, and are the only complex numbers with this property. For example, additive and multiplicative inverses of i are (i) = i and 1/i = i, respectively.

For a complex number in polar form z = r(cos φ + i sin φ), the reciprocal simply takes the reciprocal of the magnitude and the negative of the angle:

${\displaystyle {\frac {1}{z}}={\frac {1}{r}}\left(\cos(-\varphi )+i\sin(-\varphi )\right).}$

## Calculus

In real calculus, the derivative of 1/x = x−1 is given by the power rule with the power −1:

${\displaystyle {\frac {d}{dx}}x^{-1}=(-1)x^{(-1)-1}=-x^{-2}=-{\frac {1}{x^{2}}}.}$

The power rule for integrals (Cavalieri's quadrature formula) cannot be used to compute the integral of 1/x, because doing so would result in division by 0:

${\displaystyle \int {\frac {1}{x}}\,dx={\frac {x^{0}}{0}}\ +C}$

Instead the integral is given by:

${\displaystyle \int _{1}^{a}{\frac {1}{x}}\,dx=\ln a,}$
${\displaystyle \int {\frac {1}{x}}\,dx=\ln x+C.}$

where ln is the natural logarithm. To show this, note that ${\displaystyle {\frac {d}{dx}}e^{x}=e^{x}}$, so if ${\displaystyle y=e^{x}}$ and ${\displaystyle x=\ln y}$, we have: [2]

${\displaystyle {\frac {dy}{dx}}=y\quad \Rightarrow \quad {\frac {dy}{y}}=dx\quad \Rightarrow \quad \int {\frac {1}{y}}\,dy=\int 1\,dx\quad \Rightarrow \quad \int {\frac {1}{y}}\,dy=x+C=\ln y+C.}$

## Algorithms

The reciprocal may be computed by hand with the use of long division.

Computing the reciprocal is important in many division algorithms, since the quotient a/b can be computed by first computing 1/b and then multiplying it by a. Noting that ${\displaystyle f(x)=1/x-b}$ has a zero at x = 1/b, Newton's method can find that zero, starting with a guess ${\displaystyle x_{0}}$ and iterating using the rule:

${\displaystyle x_{n+1}=x_{n}-{\frac {f(x_{n})}{f'(x_{n})}}=x_{n}-{\frac {1/x_{n}-b}{-1/x_{n}^{2}}}=2x_{n}-bx_{n}^{2}=x_{n}(2-bx_{n}).}$

This continues until the desired precision is reached. For example, suppose we wish to compute 1/17 ≈ 0.0588 with 3 digits of precision. Taking x0 = 0.1, the following sequence is produced:

x1 = 0.1(2 − 17 × 0.1) = 0.03
x2 = 0.03(2 − 17 × 0.03) = 0.0447
x3 = 0.0447(2 − 17 × 0.0447) ≈ 0.0554
x4 = 0.0554(2 − 17 × 0.0554) ≈ 0.0586
x5 = 0.0586(2 − 17 × 0.0586) ≈ 0.0588

A typical initial guess can be found by rounding b to a nearby power of 2, then using bit shifts to compute its reciprocal.

In constructive mathematics, for a real number x to have a reciprocal, it is not sufficient that x ≠ 0. There must instead be given a rational number r such that 0 < r < |x|. In terms of the approximation algorithm described above, this is needed to prove that the change in y will eventually become arbitrarily small.

This iteration can also be generalised to a wider sort of inverses, e.g. matrix inverses.

## Reciprocals of irrational numbers

Every number excluding zero has a reciprocal, and reciprocals of certain irrational numbers can have important special properties. Examples include the reciprocal of e (≈ 0.367879) and the golden ratio's reciprocal (≈ 0.618034). The first reciprocal is special because no other positive number can produce a lower number when put to the power of itself; ${\displaystyle f(1/e)}$ is the global minimum of ${\displaystyle f(x)=x^{x}}$. The second number is the only positive number that is equal to its reciprocal plus one:${\displaystyle \varphi =1/\varphi +1}$. Its additive inverse is the only negative number that is equal to its reciprocal minus one:${\displaystyle -\varphi =-1/\varphi -1}$.

The function ${\displaystyle f(n)=n+{\sqrt {(n^{2}+1)}},n\in \mathbb {N} ,n>0}$ gives an infinite number of irrational numbers that differ with their reciprocal by an integer. For example, ${\displaystyle f(2)}$ is the irrational ${\displaystyle 2+{\sqrt {5}}}$. Its reciprocal ${\displaystyle 1/(2+{\sqrt {5}})}$ is ${\displaystyle -2+{\sqrt {5}}}$, exactly ${\displaystyle 4}$ less. Such irrational numbers share a curious property: they have the same fractional part as their reciprocal.

## Further remarks

If the multiplication is associative, an element x with a multiplicative inverse cannot be a zero divisor (x is a zero divisor if some nonzero y, xy = 0). To see this, it is sufficient to multiply the equation xy = 0 by the inverse of x (on the left), and then simplify using associativity. In the absence of associativity, the sedenions provide a counterexample.

The converse does not hold: an element which is not a zero divisor is not guaranteed to have a multiplicative inverse. Within Z, all integers except −1, 0, 1 provide examples; they are not zero divisors nor do they have inverses in Z. If the ring or algebra is finite, however, then all elements a which are not zero divisors do have a (left and right) inverse. For, first observe that the map f(x) = ax must be injective: f(x) = f(y) implies x = y:

{\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}ax&=ay&\quad \Rightarrow &\quad ax-ay=0\\&&\quad \Rightarrow &\quad a(x-y)=0\\&&\quad \Rightarrow &\quad x-y=0\\&&\quad \Rightarrow &\quad x=y.\end{aligned}}}

Distinct elements map to distinct elements, so the image consists of the same finite number of elements, and the map is necessarily surjective. Specifically, ƒ (namely multiplication by a) must map some element x to 1, ax = 1, so that x is an inverse for a.

## Applications

The expansion of the reciprocal 1/q in any base can also act [3] as a source of pseudo-random numbers, if q is a "suitable" safe prime, a prime of the form 2p + 1 where p is also a prime. A sequence of pseudo-random numbers of length q  1 will be produced by the expansion.

## Notes

1. " In equall Parallelipipedons the bases are reciprokall to their altitudes". OED "Reciprocal" §3a. Sir Henry Billingsley translation of Elements XI, 34.
2. Anthony, Dr. "Proof that INT(1/x)dx = lnx". Ask Dr. Math. Drexel University. Retrieved 22 March 2013.
3. Mitchell, Douglas W., "A nonlinear random number generator with known, long cycle length," Cryptologia 17, January 1993, 55–62.

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## References

• Maximally Periodic Reciprocals, Matthews R.A.J. Bulletin of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications vol 28 pp 147–148 1992