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Question from Gerald, a student:

Find the 1987th digit in the decimal equivalent to 1785/9999 starting from decimal point. Can you give us a short but powerful technique in solving this problem? thanks so much..

Try an experiment with your calculator: Explore the decimal representations of the fractions

1/9, 2/9
1/99, 17/99
1/999, 178/999
1/9999, 1785/9999.

I don't know about any "powerful" techniques, but you might try looking up "repeating decimals" on our web page (or using Google if you prefer).

Chris

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