We start with the definition of the Legendre Symbol

Defintion (Continued Fraction)
A continued fraction is an expression of the form $$ \begin{align} a_0 + \cfrac{1}{a_1 + \cfrac{1}{a_2 + \cfrac{1}{a_3 + \cdots}}} \end{align} $$ where \(a_0\) is an integer and \(a_1, a_2, a_3, \ldots\) are positive integers.

Example 1

We can write \(\pi\) as \([3; 7, 15, 1, 292, \ldots]\) as follows

$$ \begin{align} \pi = 3 + \cfrac{1}{\,7 + \cfrac{1}{\,15 + \cfrac{1}{\,1 + \cfrac{1}{292 + \cdots}}}} \end{align} $$

Example 2

Write the rational number \(\frac{37}{13}\) as a continued fraction. To do this, first write

$$ \begin{align} \frac{37}{13} = 2 + \frac{11}{13} \end{align} $$

Note here that we can re-write \(\frac{11}{13}\) as follows

$$ \begin{align} \frac{37}{13} = 2 + \frac{1}{\frac{13}{11}} \end{align} $$

But \(13/11 = 1 + \frac{2}{11}\). Hence

$$ \begin{align} \frac{37}{13} = 2 + \frac{1}{\frac{13}{11}} \end{align} $$

References