Simplifying a fraction as a surd?

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The discussion centers on the simplification of the fraction 115/36 into a surd form. Participants debate the definition of a surd and whether expressing the fraction as a square root constitutes simplification. The consensus indicates that writing 115/36 as a mixed number, specifically 3 and 7/36, is a more straightforward approach than attempting to express it as a surd.

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Simplifying a fraction as a surd??

If I have a rather large fraction such as 115/36 there is no obvious way of cancelling this, but is there a way of expressing it as a surd?
 
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What do you mean by "expressing it as a surd"? Writing either numerator or denominator as a square root of yet a larger number would hardly strike me as "simplifying". (And do you really consider 115/36 as a "large fraction"? How about writing it as 3 and 7/36?)
 

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