Wednesday, 3 August 2016

elementary set theory - Problems about Countability related to Function Spaces



Suppose we have the following sets, and determine whether they are countably infinite or uncountable .




  1. The set of all functions from N to N.



  2. The set of all non-increasing functions from N to
    N.


  3. The set of all non-decreasing functions from N to
    N.


  4. The set of all injective functions from N to
    N.


  5. The set of all surjective functions from from N to
    N.


  6. The set of all bijection functions from from N to
    N.







My thoughts on this:




  1. The first set is uncountable by using diagonalization argument.


  2. I have read something about it saying this is countable since we can see this as a set of finite sequences of natural numbers. But I have hard time following the argument.


  3. The article I read says this is uncountable but I couldn't follow the argument either.



  4. For (4),(5) and (6), I am not even sure how to approach problems like these.




Could someone please explain how to approach this kind of problems in general?



And does it matter when I change all the N to R?


Answer



Another approach to the 6th part.



Let us denote the set of all bijections from N to N by Bij(N,N).




Clearly
|Bij(N,N)|00=20=c.



Let us try to show the opposite inequality.



For arbitrary function fBij(N,N) we define Fix(f)={nN;f(n)=n}. (That is, Fix(f) is the set of all fixed points of the map f.)
Let us try to answer the question, whether for any
AN it is possible to find a bijection fA:NN such Fix(fA)=A. Let us consider two cases.




If the complement of the set A is infinite, i.e. NA={bn;nN} (and we can assume that the elements NA are written in the increasing order, i.e. $b_1 ), then we can define a function fA as follows:
fA(x)={x,if xA, b2k+1,if x=b2k for some kN, b2k,if x=b2k+1 for some kN.
In the other words, we did not move the elements of A and the elements from the complement were paired and we interchanged it pair.
Such map is a bijection from N to N such that Fix(fA)=A.




Next we consider the case that NA is finite.



If NA=, then f=idN is a function fulfilling Fix(fA)=N=A.



If the set NA is a singleton {a}, then is is impossible to find a bijection f such that Fix(f)=A=N{a}. No element of A can be mapped on a (since all such elements are fixed). But a cannot be mapped on a since this would mean that a is a fixed point.



But if the set NA has at least two elements, then it is possible to construct such a map. We again assume that the elements bk are written in the increasing order, i.e. NA={b0,,bn} and $b_0.
We put fA(x)=x for xA, fA(bk)=bk+1 for $0\le k and fA(bn)=b0. (I.e. we made a cycle consisting of elements of NA.)




This defines a bijection fA:NN such that Fix(fA)=A.



The assignment AfA that we described above is a map from the set P(N){N{a}N} consisting of all subsets of N, whose complement is not a singleton, to the set Bij(N,N). This map is injective; since from fA=fB we get A=Fix(fA)=Fix(fB)=B.



From the set P(N) with the cardinality c we have omitted a countable set {N{a}N}. Therefore the cardinality of this difference P(N){N{a}N} is again c.



So we found an injection from a set of cardinality c to the set Bij(N,N). This yields the opposite inequality
c|Bij(N,N)|
and by Cantor-Bernstein theorem we get |Bij(N,N)|=c.


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