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My name is Joshua. I am a physics major aspiring to be a theoretical physicist. I find immense beauty in mathematics and as such post, mostly reblog, a lot of mathematics and physics. However, this still remains a personal blog, rather than being aimed at one particular subject.

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  1. Thomae’s function, named after Carl Johannes Thomae, also known as the popcorn function, the raindrop function, the countable cloud function, the modified Dirichlet function, the ruler function,[1] the Riemann function or the Stars over Babylon (by John Horton Conway) is a modification of the Dirichlet function. This real-valued function f(x) is defined as follows: If x = 0 we take q = 1. It is assumed here that gcd(p, q) = 1 and q > 0 so that the function is well-defined and non-negative. Discontinuities The popcorn function is perhaps the simplest example of a function with a complicated set of discontinuities: f is continuous at all irrational numbers and discontinuous at all rational numbers. Informal Proof Clearly, f is discontinuous at all rational numbers: since the irrationals are dense in the reals, for any rational x, no matter what ε we select, there is an irrational a even nearer to our x where f(a) = 0 (while f(x) is positive). In other words, f can never get “close” and “stay close” to any positive number because its domain is dense with zeroes. To show continuity at the irrationals, assume without loss of generality that our ε is rational (for any irrational ε, we can choose a smaller rational ε and the proof is transitive). Since ε is rational, it can be expressed in lowest terms as a/b. We want to show that f(x) is continuous when x is irrational. Note that f takes a maximum value of 1 at each whole integer, so we may limit our examination to the space between  and . Since ε has a finite denominator of b, the only values for which f may return a value greater than ε are those with a reduced denominator no larger than b. There exist only a finite number of values between two integers with denominator no larger than b, so these can be exhaustively listed. Setting δ to be smaller than the nearest distance from x to one of these values guarantees every value within δ of x has f(x) < ε.

    Thomae’s function, named after Carl Johannes Thomae, also known as the popcorn function, the raindrop function, the countable cloud function, the modified Dirichlet function, the ruler function,[1] the Riemann function or the Stars over Babylon (by John Horton Conway) is a modification of the Dirichlet function. This real-valued function f(x) is defined as follows:

    f(x)=\begin{cases} \frac{1}{q}\mbox{ if }x=\frac{p}{q}\mbox{ is a rational number}\\ 0\mbox{ if }x\mbox{ is irrational}. \end{cases}

    If x = 0 we take q = 1. It is assumed here that gcd(p, q) = 1 and q > 0 so that the function is well-defined and non-negative.

    Discontinuities

    The popcorn function is perhaps the simplest example of a function with a complicated set of discontinuities: f is continuous at all irrational numbers and discontinuous at all rational numbers.

    Informal Proof

    Clearly, f is discontinuous at all rational numbers: since the irrationals are dense in the reals, for any rational x, no matter what ε we select, there is an irrational a even nearer to our x where f(a) = 0 (while f(x) is positive). In other words, f can never get “close” and “stay close” to any positive number because its domain is dense with zeroes.

    To show continuity at the irrationals, assume without loss of generality that our ε is rational (for any irrational ε, we can choose a smaller rational ε and the proof is transitive). Since ε is rational, it can be expressed in lowest terms as a/b. We want to show that f(x) is continuous when x is irrational.

    Note that f takes a maximum value of 1 at each whole integer, so we may limit our examination to the space between  \lfloor x \rfloor and  \lceil x \rceil. Since ε has a finite denominator of b, the only values for which f may return a value greater than ε are those with a reduced denominator no larger than b. There exist only a finite number of values between two integers with denominator no larger than b, so these can be exhaustively listed. Setting δ to be smaller than the nearest distance from x to one of these values guarantees every value within δ of x has f(x) < ε.

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      Какая же красотища.
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