Thursday, 30 July 2015

real analysis - If f is nowhere differentiable does it follow that f is monotonic at no point?



Let f:RR be a continuous functions that is nowhere differentiable. From this question (Does there exist a nowhere differentiable, everywhere continous, monotone somewhere function?) , I know that it follows
that f is monotone on no interval.



Let x be a real number. We say that f is non-decreasing at x if there is a neighborhood of x, Nx, such that f(y)f(x)yx0 if yNx{x}.





If a function is continuous everywhere and differentiable nowhere,
does it follow that it is monotonic at no point? If this is not the
case can you please give a counterexample?



Answer



This does not follow: here's a cheap way to modify a given f so that it becomes monotone at a point. Consider a local minimum x0 of f. Let's assume that x0=f(x0)=0. Then f(x)0 in a neighborhood of 0, so
g(x)={f(x)x0f(x)x<0
is monotone at 0. If I'm spectacularly unlucky here, then g is now differentiable at 0, but then I can simply redefine it as 2f(x) for x0.



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