Dirichlet Invented this Function to Prove a Point

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  • Опубліковано 29 бер 2024
  • In 1829, Dirichlet invented the first nowhere continuous function.
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КОМЕНТАРІ • 267

  • @whatisrokosbasilisk80
    @whatisrokosbasilisk80 Місяць тому +1074

    Life has much improved since I stopped worrying about analytic monstrosities and decided to live C_infinity

    • @_Xeto
      @_Xeto Місяць тому +70

      Welcome to physics

    • @whatisrokosbasilisk80
      @whatisrokosbasilisk80 Місяць тому +33

      @@_Xeto There's a derivative for that

    • @Oxygenationatom
      @Oxygenationatom Місяць тому +8

      What the? I don’t understand the last part

    • @patrickdevlin8553
      @patrickdevlin8553 Місяць тому +51

      C_infinity refers to functions that have infinitely many derivatives. In other words, the commenter means they decided to exclusively work with very smooth functions (a nice place indeed, but not as nice as functions that are equal to their Taylor series)

    • @jankriz9199
      @jankriz9199 Місяць тому +4

      ​@@whatisrokosbasilisk80 certainly they are not. Some of the numerical approximating methods which are PRECISELY what physicists do when describing the real world is densely packed with many very nice very smooth functions, say gauss curves for example. Smoothness is nice and convenient, thus it is used.

  • @kolbyking2315
    @kolbyking2315 Місяць тому +680

    "On sets of measure zero, always bet on Lebesgue... and his overwhelming integrability."

    • @reedoken6143
      @reedoken6143 Місяць тому +92

      bear witness to the one who left it all behind, the one who is free

    • @aokiest
      @aokiest Місяць тому +11

      hey where did u study lebesgue integrals on i ve seen quite an amount of this but i gotta see more of it

    • @Sir_Isaac_Newton_
      @Sir_Isaac_Newton_ Місяць тому +37

      💀💀💀 Fraudmat about to get the airport treatment with this one

    • @botondbalogh6017
      @botondbalogh6017 Місяць тому +26

      Found the jujutsu kaisen fan

    • @DerPoto
      @DerPoto Місяць тому +61

      As the king of calculus, Bernhard Riemann faced the Dirichlet function.

  • @francogonz
    @francogonz Місяць тому +313

    To prove "a point" 😂

  • @FranzBiscuit
    @FranzBiscuit Місяць тому +384

    Interesting to think that these jumps occur at infinite scales too. Whether you zoom in or zoom out, the density of the discontinuities is going to be just as thick!

    • @shimrrashai-rc8fq
      @shimrrashai-rc8fq Місяць тому +41

      Yeah, you can't really visualize it perfectly ... a line riddled with infinitely tiny holes packed infinitely dense, or two complementary lines where one has holes exactly where the other is filled.

    • @TheLukeLsd
      @TheLukeLsd Місяць тому +6

      Irônicamente elas tendem a ter densidade "completa" porque a quantidade de números irracionais é um infinito além do infinito dos números racionais e pode-se dizer que a quantidade de irracionais entre dois racionais é maior que de todos os racionais. E a integral dessa função tende ao valor da constante do número irracional. Mas ao mesmo tempo entre quaisquer dois irracionais definidos haverá pelo menos um racional e entre quaisquer dois racionais definidos haverá pelo menos um irracional. Uma coisa louca lidar com infinidades, infinitos e infinitesimais.

    • @reedoken6143
      @reedoken6143 Місяць тому +9

      that's a pretty good description of the concept of dense sets in calculus and topology

  • @douglasstrother6584
    @douglasstrother6584 Місяць тому +130

    My Calculus Professor dropped this on us at the end of a Friday lecture to give something to discuss at Happy Hour.

  • @pavlosurzhenko4048
    @pavlosurzhenko4048 Місяць тому +87

    A slightly more fun example: consider a function that is equal to 0 for all irrational arguments and 1/q for any rational number p/q, where p and q are coprime and q is positive. It's not hard to show that such a function is discontinuous for all rational values and continuous for irrational ones.

    • @Grizzly01-vr4pn
      @Grizzly01-vr4pn Місяць тому +11

      Thomae's function

    • @TheLuckySpades
      @TheLuckySpades Місяць тому +11

      The modified Dirichlet function is fun
      It is also neat to show that the Dirichlet function is not Riemann integrable, but the modified one is

    • @matheusjahnke8643
      @matheusjahnke8643 Місяць тому +3

      Nitpick police coming in
      That function is also continuous for 0;

    • @pavlosurzhenko4048
      @pavlosurzhenko4048 Місяць тому +11

      @@matheusjahnke8643 The nitpick police is wrong. Zero is a rational number of the form 0/1 (0 and 1 are coprime since gcd(0,1) = 1, and 1 is positive), so the value of my function there is 1/1 = 1. But there are irrational numbers in any neighborhood of zero, and those are sent to zero, so the function is discontinuous at zero too.

    • @polvoazul
      @polvoazul Місяць тому +2

      @@pavlosurzhenko4048 so i guess you are... the nitpick fbi? heahaeheha

  • @carl00s01
    @carl00s01 Місяць тому +254

    But what happens to the FT of that function??? Also converges to 1/2 ?

    • @NuptialFailures
      @NuptialFailures Місяць тому +247

      Because the function is nowhere continuous it doesn't meet the criteria to have its Fourier transform taken. The point of this function was to essentially construct a function for which the Fourier transform couldn't be taken

    • @hansyuan4116
      @hansyuan4116 Місяць тому +30

      I believe it will be constantly 1. Observe that if f and g are Lebesgue integrable functions and the measure of {x|f(x) != g(x)} is zero, then the Fourier series of g equals the Fourier series of f. The result follows by letting f=1 for all x and g be the dirichlet function.

    • @NuptialFailures
      @NuptialFailures Місяць тому +60

      @@hansyuan4116 this will depend on how we are defining the Fourier Transform. If we use the Riemann Integral, then, as the video is discussing, the lack of piecewise continuity will make it so we can’t take the Fourier Transform.
      If we use the Lebesgue Integral then, as you suggest, we can extend the functions for which we can apply the Fourier Transform to.

    • @pierro281279
      @pierro281279 Місяць тому +7

      I was about to comment that your pronunciation of Dirichlet may have been wrong as all teacher I've had pronounced "dirikley".
      They were all wrong, my life was a lie !

    • @user-gd9vc3wq2h
      @user-gd9vc3wq2h Місяць тому +6

      ​​@@pierro281279He was German with French-speaking ancestors (from what is now the French-speaking part of Belgium). In Germany, his name is usually pronounced "Dirikley" nowadays, but the French way, i.e. "Dirishley", isn't wrong either, imo.

  • @syvisaur7735
    @syvisaur7735 Місяць тому +37

    In the description you wrote "In 1729" and I believe you meant to write "In 1829" since this would be roughly around Fourier's time..

  • @AK-vx4dy
    @AK-vx4dy 21 годину тому

    What a smooth explanations of proofs! Great job !

  • @alphahex99
    @alphahex99 Місяць тому +1

    Mindblowing. Great explanation!

  • @jakehr3
    @jakehr3 Місяць тому +37

    This just makes me realize that the intuition I had developed to explain why the cardinality of the reals is larger than the cardinality of the rationals is not correct
    Well that's fun. Just gotta relearn my fundamental understanding of infinity again

    • @jordanrodrigues1279
      @jordanrodrigues1279 Місяць тому +18

      Intuition is kinda cursed when thinking about these things. Notice that we're really close to stating the continuum hypothesis, and that can't be proven or disproven.

    • @serraramayfield9230
      @serraramayfield9230 Місяць тому +5

      @@jordanrodrigues1279Indeed, it was proven to be independent in the 90s

    • @matheusjahnke8643
      @matheusjahnke8643 Місяць тому +2

      @@jordanrodrigues1279 you mean those things are cursed while intuition fails because it isn't;

  • @astrophage381
    @astrophage381 Місяць тому +5

    Whatta rebel my man Dirichlet!
    Great video!🎉

  • @michaelzumpano7318
    @michaelzumpano7318 Місяць тому +10

    Whoa, yeah it becomes continuous. That raises moe questions… Great video! I hope you’re going to do a follow-up to this.

  • @Catman_321
    @Catman_321 Місяць тому +66

    Why does it become continuous if you take only the rational or irrational parts? Wouldn't there be an infinitely dense forest of Removable points of discontinuity if you do that?

    • @shimrrashai-rc8fq
      @shimrrashai-rc8fq Місяць тому +72

      Continuity means different things depending on the domain. In fact, calculus books that call a function with points excluded from its domain "discontinuous" at non-domain points are kinda misleading because such a thing is technically not a function at all on the "full" reals (rather it's what is called a "partial function"), since the definition of a function requires that each point of the domain be associated with _some_ point of the codomain. If you restrict the domain to, say, only rational points, then what happens is that in effect this domain cannot "see" where what you are calling "discontinuities" are, and thus it "thinks" the function is continuous. (Think about what'd happen if the reals just didn't exist, because you did not define them yet!)

    • @argon7624
      @argon7624 Місяць тому +6

      Well imagine if you only have rational numbers, for each x in Q, f(x) = 1, you are continuous on your domain

    • @hanskywalker1246
      @hanskywalker1246 Місяць тому +1

      ​@@shimrrashai-rc8fqbut then 1/x must be continuous too?

    • @skallos_
      @skallos_ Місяць тому +13

      If you exclude 0 from the domain, yes, 1/x is continuous. If you do include 0, then no matter what you define 1/0, the function will be discontinuous.

    • @hanskywalker1246
      @hanskywalker1246 Місяць тому

      @@skallos_ but since everything divided by 0 doesn't exist can't you just say that these functions then are contiuous. Or if they are just contiuous on a given interval aren't they just partly contiuous?

  • @Miguel_Noether
    @Miguel_Noether Місяць тому +68

    Dirac's delta function has entered the chat

    • @ThePiotrekpecet
      @ThePiotrekpecet Місяць тому +4

      Dirac delta is continuous when you define it properly, as a linear functional on a Schwartz space (a distribution) since it is bounded (as an operator)

    • @ThePiotrekpecet
      @ThePiotrekpecet Місяць тому +2

      Also Fourier transform is defined differently for distributions i.e.
      Fourier transform (Dirac delta(f))=Dirac delta(- Fourier transform(f))

    • @pneujai
      @pneujai Місяць тому +2

      dirac delta has nothing to do with today’s topic

  • @General12th
    @General12th Місяць тому +3

    Very cool!

  • @kalin6739
    @kalin6739 Місяць тому +4

    Great video! At 0:30, that infinite sum of trig functions would also be a weierstrass function right? Would love to see you do a video on that topic, a similarly weird function to the one you talked about this time

    • @MeButOnTheInternet
      @MeButOnTheInternet Місяць тому

      Fourier series are especially useful for solving PDEs such as the heat equation. such a series would certainly be differentiable whereas the point of the wierstrass function is that it is differentiable nowhere.

  • @Red-Brick-Dream
    @Red-Brick-Dream Місяць тому

    This might be the greatest math-pun I've ever read

  • @cooldog6807
    @cooldog6807 Місяць тому

    This is so cool

  • @12321dantheman
    @12321dantheman Місяць тому

    always coming across this function in physics

  • @nikilragav
    @nikilragav 16 днів тому +3

    how does it become continuous if you restrict the domain just to rational or irrational? won't you have holes?

    • @unknowntimelord9557
      @unknowntimelord9557 8 годин тому

      Well yes but actually no. Rationals and reals are both what we call "dense", meaning at any Intervall no matter how small you have an infinitely many numbers from both. So that makes the holes kinda disappear.
      So you might say if we forget about all reals there would obviously be a "hole" at π to which I would say: well yes but I can find a rational thats as close to it as you like.
      So basically the holes are infinitely small and everything still works just fine

  • @tttITA10
    @tttITA10 27 днів тому

    The c for rationao and d for irrational idea was the first thought I had when I saw the thumbnail. Kinda proud of having basic understanding of maths.

  • @pizzarickk333
    @pizzarickk333 Місяць тому +10

    how does restricting it to the rational inputs make it continuous?

    • @magma90
      @magma90 Місяць тому +5

      The function is defined as f(x)=a if x is rational, and f(x)=b if x is irrational, therefore if we restrict it to rational inputs, the function cannot give the value of b, as b is output when x is irrational, therefore as a is the only value of the function when x is rational, and we only can input rational numbers, the function simplifies to f(x)=a, which is continuous.

    • @pizzarickk333
      @pizzarickk333 Місяць тому +3

      @@magma90 I understand that as we restrict the domain to the rational inputs, f takes only the value a (which is 1 in pur case). But I don't understand how that makes it continuous. My understanding is that if a function is any close to being continuous on some interval I, it needs to be defined on all real numbers in I. If, for example, I define the function g(x) that equals x² when x is an integer, and 0 when it is not. If I restrict the domain to only integers, my functions would g(x) = x². But it is not continuous since it is defined only for integer values. Am I missing something here?

    • @pavlosurzhenko4048
      @pavlosurzhenko4048 Місяць тому

      @@pizzarickk333you're missing the more general definition of continuity. The most general version of it is that between arbitrary topological spaces. You treat both the domain and the codomain as their own spaces (so for our purposes irrational inputs simply don't exist). If you can't detect any discontinuities, then the function is continuous. For example, if you define a function on rational values to be 0 for x < 0 and 1 for x >= 0, you can still find that the function is discontinuous at 0, but for constant functions there aren't any discontinuities at all.
      Now the induced topology on natural numbers is a discrete one, which means that every function with natural numbers as its domain and some other topological space as a codomain is continuous. People generally don't talk about continuous functions on natural numbers because it's not very meaningful - they are _all_ continuous.
      As for more precise definitions, I'm not going to give you the most general one, since it requires some intuition building first, but if you have two sets X and Y with a well defined concept of distance between two points (let's write it as d(x, y)) then you can say that a function f from X to Y is continuous at a point x iff for any epsilon > 0 there is such a delta > 0, such that for all x' if d(x', x) < delta then d(f(x'), f(x)) < epsilon. Hopefully you can see how it's basically the same definition as in your real analysis class.

    • @natebowers7024
      @natebowers7024 Місяць тому

      ​@@pizzarickk333 I think some of your confusion may come from the (opaque) definition of continuous functions on weird sets. In your example on the integers, we have a function g:Z->Z with g(x) = x^2. The usual topology on the integers is the discrete topology; that is, ever subset of Z is open. By the definition of topological continuity, it is quite easy to see g(x) is continuous as every function from a discrete topology to an arbitrary topology is continuous (see note below)
      If you haven't studied topology, sadly, this approach isn't too intuitive. The key idea, however, is that defining a function consists of three things: the domain, the co-domain, and the map. It's normally implied that the domain is the real numbers, but, for domains like Z, definitions that are formulated over the reals no longer make sense. Topology helps us deal with these cases. I hope this helped!
      N.B. For two topological spaces (X,𝜏x), (Y,𝜏y), we say a function f:X→Y is continuous if for every open V⊆Y, its inverse image is open; that is f^-1(V)={x∈X|f(x)∈Y}∈𝜏x. A direct consequence of this definition is that every function from a discrete topology to an arbitrary topology is continuous. As the discrete topology is simply 𝜏x=P(X) (the power set of X), trivially for any V we have f^-1(V)∈𝜏x as the power set contains all subsets. Thus, the claim holds.

    • @farfa2937
      @farfa2937 Місяць тому +8

      @@pizzarickk333 Continuous always implies "within the domain". If you evaluate continuity as "it needs to be defined on all real numbers in I" you haven't restricted the domain.

  • @vivvpprof
    @vivvpprof Місяць тому

    OK ngl, that last bit killed me ☠

  • @peamutbubber
    @peamutbubber Місяць тому

    The most epic pun

  • @CoffeeKatastrophe
    @CoffeeKatastrophe Місяць тому +7

    What in banach-tarski‘s two dimensional cousin is this?

  • @jrgen7903
    @jrgen7903 18 днів тому

    how does the function become continuous if restricted to just one of the domains?

  • @manamimnm
    @manamimnm Місяць тому

    Isn't that there are more irrational numbers than rational numbers? Won't this affect the density of the lower line? What would the Fourier transformation for this function look like?

  • @davidsiriani9586
    @davidsiriani9586 Місяць тому +9

    this is for 2:21
    )
    also have you heard of the musician will wood? also good stuff

    • @johnmartorana196
      @johnmartorana196 Місяць тому +2

      Thank you. We'll need another at 3:57 if you've got one. It was driving me more crazy than it had any right to.

    • @hihello8601
      @hihello8601 Місяць тому +1

      will wood fan spotted

  • @xizar0rg
    @xizar0rg Місяць тому +13

    Wait! So does the dirichlet function even have a fourier expansion? My instinct is that it can't as it is everywhere discontinuous, and so it can't have a derivative anywhere. It also doesn't satisfy an alternate sufficiency for f-series by not being of bounded variation (Wik, '72).

    • @adammillar1324
      @adammillar1324 Місяць тому +7

      Unless I am mistaken, your instinct is backed up by a theorem! Isn’t it wonderful when that happens.
      If f is differentiable at a point x=c, it is continuous there.
      Contrapositively, if f is discontinuous at x=c, it cannot be differentiable there.

    • @pavlosurzhenko4048
      @pavlosurzhenko4048 Місяць тому +18

      You need Integrability for the Fourier expansion, not differentiability. But yeah, it's not Riemann-integrable. However, the Lebesgue integral of this function on any interval is 0, and it will also be the case after multiplying by a sine or cosine, so the Fourier series will have all zero coefficients and will converge to 0 (which is equal to the Dirichlet function almost everywhere, so it's not actually that bad).

    • @timseguine2
      @timseguine2 Місяць тому +1

      In fourier theory you can ignore an arbitrary measure zero set and get the same answer. In this context, the rationals are countably infinite and so have measure zero, so we can choose to just ignore the rationals. If we do that, the function is exactly zero everywhere that remains, so the fourier transform is exactly zero everywhere.

    • @xizar0rg
      @xizar0rg Місяць тому

      @@timseguine2 Aren't fourier transforms reversible, though? Seems like this destroys the original function. (asking, not arguing)

    • @timseguine2
      @timseguine2 Місяць тому

      @@xizar0rg Reversible in the function space L1. And the Dirichlet function is equivalent to zero in the L1 norm. As far as the L1 norm is concerned the Dirichlet function is the zero function. One way of interpreting it is that the dirichlet function has zero content at any finite frequency. Which the video hinted at.

  • @puffinjuice
    @puffinjuice Місяць тому

    Would be interesting to know about the significance of this. What has this function been used for?

  • @tovc
    @tovc День тому

    1:13 should this not converge to x = 1 at 0, because the original function is equal to x = 1 at 0?

  • @basilvanderelst128
    @basilvanderelst128 Місяць тому

    With the proof you just gave, could you say irrational numbers and rational numbers alternate in a certain way? Or not?

  • @alexlowe2054
    @alexlowe2054 6 днів тому

    This is incredible. I have so many questions. If you can find a rational number between any two irritational numbers, and an irritational between any two rational numbers, doesn't that imply that there are an equal number of rational and irrational numbers, since you cannot have a continuous sequence of either? Then why are there infinitely more irrational numbers than rational numbers? The function is interesting, but the two small proofs used to construct it are way more interesting. They imply a lot of crazy things.
    Can you make a follow up video covering a section of the number line, and why there must be more irrational numbers? Or does the proof only work for the entire number line, rather than a finite section? If that's the case, infinities are even more confusing.

    • @lah30303
      @lah30303 3 дні тому

      There are more irrational numbers between any two irrational numbers than there are rational numbers between those two (or any other two) irrational numbers.

  • @mechadense
    @mechadense Місяць тому

    I guess the merely countably infinite (actually constructivistically "existing") subset of the irrationals (that are computable by a necessarily contably infinite set of all combinatorically possible different algorithms) are sufficient here.
    So is this compatible with constructivistic math?
    I'm not sure.

  • @graf_paper
    @graf_paper 16 днів тому

    Wait!! That last sentence of the video felt like mike drop. Why dies the function become continuous when we restrict the domain to just the rational or just the irrational? Wouldn't this be a line with infinity many holes in it?!

  • @Simon-cz1jg
    @Simon-cz1jg Місяць тому

    Wouldn't splitting the function into two restricted functions not be continuous because there exists both rational and irrational numbers in all real numbers? For example, on the irrational restriction, wouldn't the function be discontinuous at every rational number like 0,1,2??

    • @hhhhhh0175
      @hhhhhh0175 Місяць тому

      talking about continuity where the domain isn't an interval (or even connected) is indeed pretty weird. if we use the normal definitions of continuity for these domains, the restrictions of the dirichlet function are continuous - but so is, for example, the indicator function of x^2 < 2 on the rational numbers, which clearly has jumps

    • @mirkotorresani9615
      @mirkotorresani9615 Місяць тому

      The restriction to some subset is a new function, that only sees that subset. And if on that subset the function is constant, then is continuous.
      We are teaching math at high-school in the same way that mathematicians did before Cauchy: everything must be an interval, and function have always a "natural" domain. The problem is that Cauchy died in 1857

  • @warguy6474
    @warguy6474 22 дні тому

    Hi is the Weierstrass function related to this subject?

  • @Raccoon5
    @Raccoon5 Місяць тому +3

    One thing that bothers me a bit. Aren't irrational numbers suppose to be denser than rational ones since they are alef_1?
    If there is at least one rational number between two irrational and one irrational between two rational it sounds like there is the same density and same amount of numbers which cannot be due to uncountable/countable Infinity

    • @canaDavid1
      @canaDavid1 Місяць тому +8

      There is not just one between them; there is a coutably infinite rationals and uncountably many irrationals.
      It's like there is always an integer between two numbers with difference > 1, and also a real between them, but there are more reals between.

    • @alexanderf8451
      @alexanderf8451 Місяць тому +2

      They do have the same density. Nothing requires sets of different cardinalities to have different densities.

    • @legendgames128
      @legendgames128 Місяць тому

      Even if the irrational numbers are more numerous, I'd be inclined to think that irrationals and rationals have the same *density*

    • @SioxerNikita
      @SioxerNikita 16 днів тому

      ​@@canaDavid1You cannot have more irrationals than rationals, if you can always find a rational in between any two irrationals and vice versa.
      Saying there is now more of one than the other is... Well... Logically wrong.
      We can say there are more reals than integers, because there is an infinite amount of reals in between any two integers.

  • @evanbasnaw
    @evanbasnaw Місяць тому +1

    If "Because FU, that's why" had a function.

  • @realdragon
    @realdragon Місяць тому +4

    But what about Fourier transformation of this function?

    • @btf_flotsam478
      @btf_flotsam478 Місяць тому

      Fourier transforms involve integrals and the rational numbers have measure zero over the real numbers. The Fourier transformation would just be zero.

    • @farfa2937
      @farfa2937 Місяць тому +1

      afaik the point this was invented to prove is that it cannot have one.

    • @ThePiotrekpecet
      @ThePiotrekpecet Місяць тому

      ​@@farfa2937it has one if you define Fourier transform in a modern way by Lebesgue integral. Fourier transform of this function is zero since Q has Lebesgue measure 0

  • @ericlaska4748
    @ericlaska4748 Місяць тому

    But what happens to the Fourier Series? How could we even attempt to compute it, since digital numbers are inherently rational and analog values irrational?

  • @markgraham2312
    @markgraham2312 Місяць тому

    I learned about this function in college.

  • @ny3dfan781
    @ny3dfan781 Місяць тому

    Can quantum nonlocality/entanglement be represented by a Dirichlet function?

    • @kikivoorburg
      @kikivoorburg Місяць тому

      They’re not really directly related. Quantum entanglement comes down to interconnected probabilities, and extends far past 2 connected states (entire systems of particles can entangle together).
      Also, which state is which is an arbitrary choice, which the rational/irrational inputs in the dirichlet function aren’t. (Obvious example: there are more irrational numbers than rational ones, by Cantor’s diagonal argument.) The fact we can distinguish these two means it can’t correspond to the indistinguishable entangled states.

  • @benrex7775
    @benrex7775 Місяць тому +1

    After watching the video I understand the problem but not the solution.
    How does the formula look like for that rational/irrational function?
    How doe the Fourier of it look like?
    is this infinitely zoomable and if so why?
    Why is it not continuous and why does every other point need to be irrational. Can't I just make up a function where every odd measurement point is 1 and every even measurement point is 2?

    • @alexanderf8451
      @alexanderf8451 Місяць тому +1

      Like calculating if a number is irrational? That's not needed here, only the existence and properties the rationals and irrationals. Its not continuous because if you pick any two points on the real line the function will have at least discontinuity (a switch between 0 and 1, in this case) between them (in fact it will always have infinitely many). You can have a function that is 1 on the odds and 2 and the evens, yes, though that doesn't matter here are parity is only defined for integers (whole numbers) and those are sparse in the reals.

    • @benrex7775
      @benrex7775 Місяць тому

      ​@@alexanderf8451 I don't think your answer really helped me understand the situation any better. Perhaps let's start with a simple question.
      Is this a function which you can formulate in the following matter: f(x)=a*x+b

    • @alexanderf8451
      @alexanderf8451 Місяць тому

      ​@@benrex7775 No, the function can't be written the way you describe.

    • @benrex7775
      @benrex7775 Місяць тому

      @@alexanderf8451 How is it written then?

    • @alexanderf8451
      @alexanderf8451 Місяць тому

      @@benrex7775 He shows you how its written in the video.

  • @underfilho
    @underfilho Місяць тому

    ok but what happens with the fourier transform of that function?

    • @ThePiotrekpecet
      @ThePiotrekpecet Місяць тому +1

      If we talk about Fourier transform defines by riemman integral it doesn't exists since 1_Q is not riemman integradable so Dirichlet would probably end at that but if you define Fourier transform by Lebesgue integral Fourier series is the 0 function so Fourier series converges everywhere to 1_Q :)

  • @MrAdamo
    @MrAdamo 19 днів тому

    That is actually so fucking genius

  • @harikrishna2k
    @harikrishna2k 29 днів тому

    Is this a reupload? I remember seeing this long ago

  • @UODZU-P
    @UODZU-P 10 днів тому

    Its almost like the function is in a "super position" of sorts?

  • @lawrencebates8172
    @lawrencebates8172 Місяць тому +2

    While I understand each of them in isolation, it makes my brain hurt to try to reconcile that a) between any two rationals there is an irrational and between any two irrationals there is a rational, and b) that rationals are countably infinite and irrationals are uncountably infinite. It feels like A should imply they have the same cardinality, even though i know that it doesn't!

    • @SioxerNikita
      @SioxerNikita 16 днів тому

      You can systematize a mathematical way to represent all rationals, you can't with irrationals.

    • @lawrencebates8172
      @lawrencebates8172 16 днів тому +1

      @@SioxerNikita That's just another way of saying that the rationals are countably infinite and irrationals are uncountably infinite, it doesn't really help with building an understanding or intuition for why.

    • @bebe8090
      @bebe8090 12 годин тому

      @@SioxerNikita Could I not say, list out the irrationals by pairing them up with one of the rational numbers? Say I have irrationals a, b, c... and rationals A, B, C... defined such that a < b < c... and A is the rational between a and b, B is the rational between b and c, so on. Since the rationals are listable, would I not have all the irrationals listed out by pairing a with A, b with B, c with C, ect?

    • @SioxerNikita
      @SioxerNikita 10 годин тому

      @@bebe8090 You wouldn't be able to, because irrationals are infinitely long, so by the mathematical standards of that, you can't.

    • @SioxerNikita
      @SioxerNikita 10 годин тому

      @@bebe8090 Essentially, you can't list irrationals like: "I start with 0.00000...1...", because there is one that has one more zero before the 1.
      While rationals, you can start systematicizing it.
      Position 0,0 could be 0.0, then 0,1 would be 0.1, and so on. 1,0 could be 1.0, etc. Listable via system. You cannot do this with irrationals. You can't make a "start point".

  • @user-pr6ed3ri2k
    @user-pr6ed3ri2k Місяць тому +1

    2:02 not differentiable anywhere?
    Weierstrass moment

  • @philipoakley5498
    @philipoakley5498 Місяць тому +2

    Isn't the number of irrationals greater than the number of rationals (different infinities), yet it appears as if they are exactly alternating (an irrational between two rationals, and a rational between two irrationals).
    Are there gaps in the continuum? ;-) Insights anyone?

    • @alexanderf8451
      @alexanderf8451 Місяць тому +2

      The irrationals are uncountable while the rationals are countable. However that doesn't matter here only their density does and both have the property of being dense in the reals. That means given any rational (or irrational) there is no meaningful "next rational" (or "next irrational"), specifically if you chose any rational (or irrational) and then declare another value to the next one there are infinitely many counterexamples. Thus they don't alternate because to alternate you'd have to be able to pick the next number.

    • @philipoakley5498
      @philipoakley5498 Місяць тому

      @@alexanderf8451It's how to explain that while you can put the numbers apparently in commuting ascending order (rational, irrational, rational,..) that you{we} don't actually have what you{we} thought you{we} had, possibly because you don't 'sort' the numbers like that to actually count the rational numbers (it may also be co-related to primes and co-primes and finding them).

    • @kikivoorburg
      @kikivoorburg Місяць тому

      They’re not “alternating”, as mentioned in the video we can’t call it “oscillating” specifically because of the fact that _there’s actually infinitely many rationals and irrationals between any two (ir)rational numbers._ It’s basically impossible for our minds to conceptualize a function like this, since infinity is weird. There’s no notion of “zooming in far enough” until you see rationals and irrationals as separate, because they just aren’t ever separate.
      Personally I interpret it as two vaguely ethereal “constant (line) functions” which look solid from a distance but are actually filled with holes. Kinda like matter in the universe, I guess

    • @semicolumnn
      @semicolumnn 16 днів тому

      @@philipoakley5498 It’s provable that you can’t exhaust the real numbers using a sequence of the form {rational, irrational, rational, …}.

    • @philipoakley5498
      @philipoakley5498 16 днів тому

      @@semicolumnn the question is how you explain it...

  • @Artemka2009_SB
    @Artemka2009_SB Місяць тому +1

    3:55 you forgot the ) after irrational

  • @tophat593
    @tophat593 26 днів тому

    Oh my god, I understood that...

  • @user-qn2bg7zb9s
    @user-qn2bg7zb9s Місяць тому +2

    But aren't "just the rationals" countably infinite thus not continuum in a sense

    • @semicolumnn
      @semicolumnn 23 дні тому

      You can define continuity on discrete sets by generalizing from the real line. In fact, one can define continuity for functions from set to set, like f: R -> Q

  • @anonymousmisnomer5443
    @anonymousmisnomer5443 Місяць тому +2

    Hey this isnt the Normal Album!

    • @the_person
      @the_person 16 днів тому

      Was searching for a Will Wood (the artist) comment

  • @vladthe_cat
    @vladthe_cat Місяць тому

    I feel like with infinite precision the function would be continuous for both rational and irrational numbers

  • @catcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatca
    @catcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatca 29 днів тому

    So between any two points in the real numberline, there are infinitely many rational numbers, and infinitely many irrational numbers for each of those rational numbers. Yet between any two irrational number there exists a rational number inbetween them.
    I guess the pigeon hole theorem doesn’t really hold once we have infinite holes.

  • @popularmisconception1
    @popularmisconception1 26 днів тому

    Well, I would argue, that y=Dirichlet(x) where x is from Q is dense, but it is not continuous, since Q, while dense, is only countably infinite, |Q|=|N|, i.e. does not have the cardinality of continuum, while R is uncountably infinite, thus R\Q is also uncountably infinite, |R| > |Q|, |R\Q| > |Q|, and thus y=Dirichlet(x) where x is from R\Q is really continuous subset. In other words, rational line y=1, is infinitely-times sparser than Irrational line y=0. Therefore, on average, the Dirichlet function is zero. Only occasionally, on those infinitely rare rational countable moments in the irrational continuum, is it 1.

    • @YouTube_username_not_found
      @YouTube_username_not_found 15 днів тому

      >> "I would argue, that y=Dirichlet(x) where x is from Q is dense, but it is not continuous, since Q, while dense, is only countably infinite"
      Continuity does not care about the cardinality , it only cares about the behaviour of the function in the neighbourhood of the non isolated points of the domain and the behaviour at that point.
      Whenever there is a sequence that converges to a point, we can define the limit of the function at that point. Note that this point need not be in the domain. And since Q is dense in R, then every real is not an isolated point, so we can define the limit of the Dirichlet function at any real number.
      This limit is determined by the behaviour of the function in the neighbourhood of the non isolated point. Since the restriction of the Dirichlet function on Q (respectively on R\Q) is constant, the behaviour of the function around any point would be constant, so any limit value would be that same constant.
      Now, we recall the definition of continuity: f is continuous at a ⇔ lim(x→a) f(x) = f(a) .
      In order for us to talk about the continuity at a point, that point must be both an non isolated and a point in the domain. This is already verified for the Dirichlet function restricted to Q (respectively R\Q) , all of the points of the domain are non isolated.
      The function is constant, so, ∀a∈Dom(f) , f(a) = c and lim(x→a) f(x) = c , they are both equal! Thus, any constant function is continuous.
      Reference: Real Analysis 26 | Limits of Functions

    • @YouTube_username_not_found
      @YouTube_username_not_found 12 днів тому

      Just to clarify; the reference is a video on UA-cam

  • @lordtadhg
    @lordtadhg Місяць тому

    2:21 um... you are missing a closing parenthesis on "(irrational" and then again at 3:59.

  • @hafez591
    @hafez591 Місяць тому

    Infinite decimals does not mean necessarily that the number is irrational, take for example 1/3

  • @TheFinagle
    @TheFinagle Місяць тому

    Inadvertently there is a proof in here (or at least a basis for one) that the number of rationals and number of irrationals is actually the same, and thus they are the same size of infinity.
    This would contradict other proofs that show that there are more irrationals than rationals, infinitely many more making the counts different orders of infinity.
    I wonder if you could find a flaw in one of these proofs using the other, or if they can both be true (which would be weird, but infinities can sometimes just be weird like that)

    • @semicolumnn
      @semicolumnn 23 дні тому

      Between two irrationals a,b there are countably infinitely many rationals and uncountably infinitely many irrationals. (This immediately follows from the fact that (a,b) is uncountably infinite and that Q is dense in R as demonstrated in the video). While Q is dense in R, it can still be denumerated.

    • @TheFinagle
      @TheFinagle 23 дні тому

      ​@@semicolumnn Ok, but according to the Dirichlet function rationals and irrationals strictly alternate. Because they strictly alternate each rational is followed by one and only one irrational, and each irrational is followed by one and only one rational. Thus according to Dirichlet and the proof started around 2:18 there is an exact 1 to 1 relationship between rationals and irrationals.
      Somewhere between the different proofs exists a contradiction, but as they are describing different facets of the number line and I don't think they directly contradict each other.
      My quandary which I am not knowledgeable enough to follow through properly is if they really are in contradiction where only one could be true or if it could be solved an shown that both things are true simultaneously - that there are infinitely many more irrationals than rationals AND an exact 1 to 1 relation between rationals and irrationals
      (which as I said would be weird, but sometimes infinities just do weird stuff)

    • @semicolumnn
      @semicolumnn 23 дні тому

      ​@@TheFinagle A rational isnt followed by exactly one irrational. In constructing the irrational, Dr. Wood uses (a + r(b-a)) where r is an irrational number between 0 and 1. There are uncountably many irrational numbers between 0 and 1 (Because (0,1) is uncountable and Q is countable) and thus there are uncountably many irrational numbers between two rationals. The other direction is much simpler. We know that there are infinitely many rationals between any two reals, and that the rationals are only countably infinite. Thus, the number of rationals between two irrationals is countably infinite.
      To recap: Between any two real numbers a and b, there exist uncountably many irrationals and countably many rationals. No paradox.

    • @TheFinagle
      @TheFinagle 23 дні тому

      @@semicolumnn Then it should be possible to formally write that proof in a way that directly disproves that Dirichlet's function as being strictly discontinuous, ie that at some points you must have more than one irrational in a sequence because there are more irrationals than rationals. Thus forcing a continuity to exist within the function where irrationals happen in sequence.
      In doing so you would break one of the 2 proofs he used to show that they strictly alternate such that the function can be discontinuous between ALL real numbers.

    • @semicolumnn
      @semicolumnn 23 дні тому

      @@TheFinagle You can't have any real numbers in a sequence. If you could, their difference would be the smallest positive real number, but no such number exists.

  • @smorrow
    @smorrow Місяць тому

    Anyone remember when UA-cam was literally just cat videos? Yeah... I dropped out of maths at university right before the change happened.

  • @zunaidparker
    @zunaidparker Місяць тому

    Still waiting to hear what the Fourier transform is...this was false advertising 😂

  • @Nia-zq5jl
    @Nia-zq5jl Місяць тому

    Damn, how they become continuous by themselves?

  • @bebemichelin425
    @bebemichelin425 Місяць тому

    I'm pretty sure his name's pronounced Deer-ee-cleh rather than deer-ee-shleh, at least that's how Wikipedia and my professor say his name

  • @vinuthomas7193
    @vinuthomas7193 Місяць тому

    How can it be continuous on just the rationals if there are irrationals in between? How would such a function even be defined?

  • @Charij_
    @Charij_ Місяць тому

    This makes intuitive sense to me, but wouldn't this also prove that there is an equal number of rational and irrational numbers?

    • @surelyred
      @surelyred Місяць тому

      you can’t, it isn’t really true, look it up

  • @KookyPiranha
    @KookyPiranha 2 дні тому

    1:12 🙋‍♂

  • @bigzigtv706
    @bigzigtv706 Місяць тому

    I thought there were more rationals than irrationals

  • @vsm1456
    @vsm1456 Місяць тому

    The emphasis in "Dirichlet" is on "e", not on either of "i".

  • @raghavmahajan3341
    @raghavmahajan3341 Місяць тому +3

    People had a lot of free time those days.

  • @Vincent-kl9jy
    @Vincent-kl9jy Місяць тому +3

    Does this have any applications for quantum mechanics and super positions?

  • @ucngominh3354
    @ucngominh3354 Місяць тому

    Hi

  • @natewright1197
    @natewright1197 Місяць тому

    "Restricting it to just the rationals or just the irrationals, the function becomes continuous"...but it is not defined at every point, correct?
    So if we say y=1 for x=rational, then we pick an irrational number (x = pi), then the function y becomes undefined. Therefore, the function is not continuous because it has to be defined for all x.

    • @alexanderf8451
      @alexanderf8451 Місяць тому +6

      If you restrict it to the rationals then you can't pick an irrational number, it doesn't exist in the domain of the function.

    • @mirkotorresani9615
      @mirkotorresani9615 Місяць тому

      But the restriction has a new domain, the one you are restricting on.
      And if I have a function f from X to Y, I don't need to have an outside world where X lives in, for speaking about continuity.
      And since our restricted function is constant on all his domain, then it is continuous.
      Since, in absolute generality, a constant function g:X -> Y brween topological spaces is always continous

  • @augnix888
    @augnix888 Місяць тому +1

    :O

  • @Xayuap
    @Xayuap Місяць тому +2

    so the function is continuous but not dereivable. ¿Weierstrass?

    • @edsangha3724
      @edsangha3724 Місяць тому +2

      the function is not continuous in R

    • @alexanderf8451
      @alexanderf8451 Місяць тому +4

      No, this function is discontinuous everywhere and thus, unsurprisingly, doesn't have an derivative. Weierstrass's function is continuous everywhere but still has no derivative anywhere, which is even stranger.

    • @Xayuap
      @Xayuap Місяць тому

      what about the length of a weierstrass segment?

  • @Knuckles2761
    @Knuckles2761 Місяць тому

    >> 4:38 - in fact, restricting the function to just the rationals or just the irrationals gives you a constant function
    No. It gives you a function with infinite number of holes. Function does not exists in that holes or not defined. That is not a constant function.

    • @semicolumnn
      @semicolumnn 23 дні тому

      in R, yes. but were restricting to Q, where it is a constant function. the difference is always 0 so itll always beat any epsilon regardless of the delta.

  • @ErenDoppleganer
    @ErenDoppleganer Місяць тому

    Siri help

  • @supthos
    @supthos Місяць тому

    4:45 I think Cantor would disagree, for the set rational numbers cannot constitute a continuum. It is discrete!

    • @ThePiotrekpecet
      @ThePiotrekpecet Місяць тому +1

      It doesn't matter, euclidean metric restricted to Q induces a topology on Q and therefore we can talk about continuity

    • @ThePiotrekpecet
      @ThePiotrekpecet Місяць тому +1

      You can even talk about continuity on Z with discrete metric (but then every function is continuous so it's not as interesting). Topology, and therefore the notion of continuity, can be introduced on any nonempty set

    • @mirkotorresani9615
      @mirkotorresani9615 Місяць тому

      You know that math has advanced a little since Cantor times?

  • @RussellSubedi
    @RussellSubedi Місяць тому

    Does that mean there's an equal number of rational and irrational numbers?

    • @alexanderf8451
      @alexanderf8451 Місяць тому

      No, density and cardinality are different properties of sets.

  • @brockobama257
    @brockobama257 Місяць тому

    I clicked BECAUSE of the clever title

  • @Utesfan100
    @Utesfan100 Місяць тому +20

    This function is 0 almost everywhere, so it might as well be 0.

    • @SpinDip42069
      @SpinDip42069 Місяць тому +36

      Imagine how useless mathematics would be if we applied your logic to everything

    • @brightblackhole2442
      @brightblackhole2442 Місяць тому +28

      @@SpinDip42069 "real numbers are irrational almost everywhere so they might as well all be irrational"

    • @lumina_
      @lumina_ Місяць тому +1

      what.

    • @cara-setun
      @cara-setun Місяць тому +30

      The engineer

    • @Malthusia
      @Malthusia Місяць тому

      @@cara-setunreal

  • @canyoupoop
    @canyoupoop Місяць тому

    I guess you could say Dirichlet's function is pretty much...broken

  • @douglasstrother6584
    @douglasstrother6584 Місяць тому +1

    My Calculus Professor dropped this on us at the end of a Friday lecture to give something to discuss at Happy Hour.

  • @PaprikaX33
    @PaprikaX33 Місяць тому +6

    I'm sure if the function is discovered in 1900s it would be called schrödinger function. f(x) is in superposition of both 1 and 0 until x is observed to either be rational or irrational. Upon observation f(x) collapses to either 0 or 1.

    • @edsangha3724
      @edsangha3724 Місяць тому +1

      very cool link to physics here maboi

    • @philipoakley5498
      @philipoakley5498 Місяць тому +1

      Love it. !

    • @semicolumnn
      @semicolumnn 23 дні тому

      Probably not... unless Schrödinger were to come up with it. In reality it would probably be called the indicator function on Q, since the reluctance of mathematicians to name things after people increases with time.

    • @user-jn9hs5ry7h
      @user-jn9hs5ry7h 2 дні тому

      No it's stupid. It is like saying f(x) = |x|/x is schrödinger function because f(x) is in superposition of both 1 and -1 until x is observed to either be negative of positive.

    • @edsangha3724
      @edsangha3724 День тому

      @@user-jn9hs5ry7h the example you’ve given seems to fit the description of Schrödinger function, your point is?