math/big: Add small complete example of big.Rat usage

Updates #11241

Change-Id: If71f651f3b8aca432c91314358b93f195217d9ec
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/14317
Reviewed-by: Robert Griesemer <gri@golang.org>

src/math/big/example_rat_test.go

@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+// Copyright 2015 The Go Authors. All rights reserved.
+// Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
+// license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
+
+package big_test
+
+import (
+	"fmt"
+	"math/big"
+)
+
+// Use the classic continued fraction for e
+//     e = [1; 0, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, ... 2n, 1, 1, ...]
+// i.e., for the nth term, use
+//     1          if   n mod 3 != 1
+//  (n-1)/3 * 2   if   n mod 3 == 1
+func recur(n, lim int64) *big.Rat {
+	term := new(big.Rat)
+	if n%3 != 1 {
+		term.SetInt64(1)
+	} else {
+		term.SetInt64((n - 1) / 3 * 2)
+	}
+
+	if n > lim {
+		return term
+	}
+
+	// Directly initialize frac as the fractional
+	// inverse of the result of recur.
+	frac := new(big.Rat).Inv(recur(n+1, lim))
+
+	return term.Add(term, frac)
+}
+
+// This example demonstrates how to use big.Rat to compute the
+// first 15 terms in the sequence of rational convergents for
+// the constant e (base of natural logarithm).
+func Example_eConvergents() {
+	for i := 1; i <= 15; i++ {
+		r := recur(0, int64(i))
+
+		// Print r both as a fraction and as a floating-point number.
+		// Since big.Rat implements fmt.Formatter, we can use %-13s to
+		// get a left-aligned string representation of the fraction.
+		fmt.Printf("%-13s = %s\n", r, r.FloatString(8))
+	}
+
+	// Output:
+	// 2/1           = 2.00000000
+	// 3/1           = 3.00000000
+	// 8/3           = 2.66666667
+	// 11/4          = 2.75000000
+	// 19/7          = 2.71428571
+	// 87/32         = 2.71875000
+	// 106/39        = 2.71794872
+	// 193/71        = 2.71830986
+	// 1264/465      = 2.71827957
+	// 1457/536      = 2.71828358
+	// 2721/1001     = 2.71828172
+	// 23225/8544    = 2.71828184
+	// 25946/9545    = 2.71828182
+	// 49171/18089   = 2.71828183
+	// 517656/190435 = 2.71828183
+}