Exercise 5.2.6

The cardinality of the set of all discontinuous functions is 2 2 0 . [Hint: Using Exercise 2.5, show that | 𝑹 𝑹 C | = 2 2 0 whenever | C | 2 0 .]

Answers

Lemma 1. If B is a set with | B | = 2 2 0 and A is a subset of B with | A | 2 0 then | B A | = 2 2 0 .

Proof. The proof is analogous to that of Theorem 5.2.4. So suppose that C is a set with | C | = 2 2 0 . Let B = C × C so that by Exercise 5.2.5 we have

| B | = | C × C | = 2 2 0 2 2 0 = 2 2 0 .

Also suppose that A B where | A | = 2 0 . Now define a set

P = { x C y C ( ( x , y ) A ) } .

Clearly then | P | | A | = 2 0 . Since also | C | = 2 2 0 but P C it follows that there is an x 0 C where x 0 P . If we let X = { x 0 } × C then any ( x , y ) X is not in A so that ( x , y ) C × C A = B A . Hence X B A but also since there is an obvious bijection between X and C we have

2 2 0 = | C | = | X | | B A | .

Since also clearly B A B we also have that

| B A | | B | = 2 2 0 .

Hence by the Cantor-Bernstein Theorem | B A | = 2 2 0 as desired. □

Main Problem.

Proof. By Lemma 5.2.7 | 𝑹 𝑹 | = 2 2 0 . Also by Theorem 5.2.6a the set C of all continuous f : 𝑹 𝑹 has cardinality of 2 0 . Thus clearly the set of all discontinuous functions from 𝑹 𝑹 is simply

D = 𝑹 𝑹 C .

But then by Lemma 1 above we have that

| D | = | 𝑹 𝑹 | = 2 2 0

as desired. □

User profile picture
2024-07-15 11:42
Comments