Stern–Brocot tree

In number theory, the Stern–Brocot tree is an infinite complete binary tree in which the vertices correspond one-for-one to the positive rational numbers, whose values are ordered from the left to the right as in a search tree.

The Stern–Brocot tree was discovered independently by MoritzStern (1858) and AchilleBrocot (1861). Stern was a German number theorist; Brocot was a French clockmaker who used the Stern–Brocot tree to design systems of gears with a gear ratio close to some desired value by finding a ratio of smooth numbers near that value.