This paper studies coinductive representations of real numbers by signed digit streams and fast Cauchy sequences. It is shown how the associated coinductive principle can be used to give straightforward and easily implementable proofs of the equivalence of the two representations as well as the correctness of various corecursive exact real number algorithms. The basic framework is the classical theory of coinductive sets as greatest fixed points of monotone operators and hence is different from (though related to) the type theoretic approach by Ciaffaglione and Gianantonio. Key words: Exact real number computation, coinduction, corecursion, signed digit streams. 1

Abstract. We describe two representations for real numbers, signed digit streams and Cauchy sequences. We give coinductive proofs for the correctness of functions converting between these two representations to show the adequacy of signed digit stream representation. We also show a coinductive proof for the correctness of a corecursive program for the average function with regard to the signed digit stream representation. We implemented this proof in the interactive proof system Minlog. Thus, reliable, corecursive functions for real computation can be guaranteed, which is very helpful in formal software development for real numbers.