I do not quite get it. Why can't we represent all real numbers as a sum of rational numbers? Why do we need irrational numbers?
For example,
- $\pi=3.14159265358\cdots=3+10^{-1}+4*10^{-2}+10^{-3}+5*10^{-4}+\cdots$
- $e=2.71828182846\cdots=2+7*10^{-1}+10^{-2}+8*10^{-3}+2*10^{-4}+\cdots$
- And so on
You can represent any real number as some convergent sequence of rational numbers, as you do above. However, irrational numbers are those numbers that cannot be expressed as any finite such sequence. However long of a finite sequence of rational numbers approaching $\pi$ you have, there is a positive real number $\varepsilon$ such that the last term in the sequence is at least $\varepsilon$ away from $\pi$ (In particular, we can take the last term of the sequence, $t$, and take $\varepsilon = \frac{|\pi - t|}{2}$).