How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced — the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted — a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated — a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
No function is continuous at every rational and discontinuous at every irrational, because is not
Statement
There is no function that is continuous at every rational and discontinuous at every irrational (Continuity of at a point of and on : the - condition, its agreement with at a limit point, and continuity at an isolated point, The rationals embed densely in the reals).
Equivalently: is not the continuity set of any function .
The contrast with Thomae's function is the point. There is a function continuous exactly at the irrationals, namely (The Dirichlet function is continuous at no point of , and Thomae's function is continuous at every irrational and at no rational, so its set of continuity points is exactly the set of irrationals and its oscillation at equals ), and one might expect the two arrangements to be symmetric. They are not, because the classes and are exchanged by complementation while and the irrationals are, and only one of the two sets is ( is , meager and not , while the irrationals are , residual and not ).
Facts & Assumptions
Given: denotes the canonical copy of the rationals inside (The rationals embed densely in the reals).
For every the set of points at which is continuous is a subset of (For the set of points of at which is discontinuous is the intersection with of an subset of , and the set of points at which is continuous is the intersection with of a subset; for the two sets are and outright, case , and subsets of ).
is not a subset of ( is , meager and not , while the irrationals are , residual and not , claim 3).
Proof
Suppose, for contradiction, that there is continuous at every rational and discontinuous at every irrational.
Then the set of continuity points of is exactly : it contains every rational by hypothesis, and it contains no irrational, again by hypothesis.
By the theorem the set of continuity points of is a subset of , so is . This contradicts the fact that is not , so no such exists.
Remarks
-
Where the work actually is. Nothing in this corollary is hard; all of it was done earlier. The theorem is For the set of points of at which is discontinuous is the intersection with of an subset of , and the set of points at which is continuous is the intersection with of a subset; for the two sets are and outright, which rests on the oscillation, and the failure of to be is is , meager and not , while the irrationals are , residual and not , which is where the Baire category theorem is spent. The corollary is the place where those two meet.
-
A weaker statement is true and much cheaper, and is not what is proved here. That no monotone function is continuous exactly at the rationals follows from Froda's theorem: the set of discontinuities of a monotone function on an interval is at most countable, the injection into being built from one fixed enumeration of the rationals by least index, so no choice principle is used alone, since the irrationals are uncountable. The statement above is about all functions and needs category.
Depends on
- For $f : A \to \mathbb{R}$ the set of points of $A$ at which $f$ is discontinuous is the intersection with $A$ of an $F_\sigma$ subset of $\mathbb{R}$, and the set of points at which $f$ is continuous is the intersection with $A$ of a $G_\delta$ subset; for $A = \mathbb{R}$ the two sets are $F_\sigma$ and $G_\delta$ outright
- $F_\sigma$ and $G_\delta$ subsets of $\mathbb{R}$
- $\mathbb{Q}$ is $F_\sigma$, meager and not $G_\delta$, while the irrationals are $G_\delta$, residual and not $F_\sigma$
- Continuity of $f : A \to \mathbb{R}$ at a point of $A$ and on $A$: the $\varepsilon$-$\delta$ condition, its agreement with $\lim_{x \to c} f(x) = f(c)$ at a limit point, and continuity at an isolated point
- The rationals embed densely in the reals
Used by
Nothing in the library uses this result yet.
Dependency tree · next 3 levels
Direct dependencies and their dependencies through the next three levels: 111 results over 32 levels. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, and this result sits at the bottom with a heavier outline. Click the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- Gdelta set (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- Baire category theorem (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)