fractional parts

[Jon Trowbridge]

On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 03:45:20PM -0400, Terry wrote:
> but what about something like:
> 
> 234 3/8 1/5 == 234 + 3/8 + 1/5 USD
> 
> That could equivalently be expressed as 
> 
> 234 23/40
> 
> But that's not my point - I have never seen the use of more than one fraction.
> 
> My question - has anybody???? Would there be a reason for using more than one ?

US 5-year gov't bond future trade in 64ths but are quoted in 32nds, so
you'll see price quotes like:

  123-120  and  123-125

which correspond to 

  123 12.0/32  and  123 12.5/32 

(i.e. 123 24/64 and 123 25/64)

So I guess that would be sort of like

123 12/32 1/64

...but I think that sort of misses the point.  It seems to be that
this is just a consequence of a very bad choice of notation, not a
true decomposition of a price into the sum of an integer piece and
multiple fractional pieces with different denominators.

Other than this, I can't think of any example of this sort of thing.

-JT

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