Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2009
The fact that continued fractions can be described in terms of Farey sections is used to obtain a generalised continued fraction algorithm. Geometrically, the algorithm transfers the continued fraction process from the real line R to an arbitrary rational line l in Rn. Arithmetically, the algorithm provides a sequence of simultaneous rational approximations to a set of n real numbers θ1, …, θn in the extreme case where all of the numbers are rationally dependent on 1 and (say) θ1. All but a finite number of best approximations are given by the algorithm.