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.
The Cantor set is exactly the set of with every , and this gives a bijection with
Statement
Let be the set of sequences (Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences), the two values being the real numbers and . For the series converges (Series, partial sums, convergence and the sum, divergence, and the tail series); write
Then, with and as in The Cantor middle-thirds set as the intersection of the sets obtained by removing open middle thirds:
- for every , and ;
- is injective, so is a bijection from onto (Injection, surjection, bijection);
- consequently is a bijection from , the set of sequences with values in , onto ;
- , and the two sets on the right are disjoint.
On the indexing. The digit carries the weight , so the series starts at with the term ; written with the classical -based index it reads , which is the form in the title. Sequences in this library are functions on and contains (Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences), so the -based form is the one used throughout the proof.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: The sets and of The Cantor middle-thirds set as the intersection of the sets obtained by removing open middle thirds, the set of sequences with values in , and for the shifted sequence defined by , which again lies in .
The Cantor set: , , , every , the two halves of lie in and in respectively and are disjoint, and denotes (The Cantor middle-thirds set as the intersection of the sets obtained by removing open middle thirds, Intervals of : the nine order-convex forms, nondegeneracy, and length).
Series: partial sums , convergence of , the sum as its limit, the tail clause and the identity (Series, partial sums, convergence and the sum, divergence, and the tail series, Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences).
A series of nonnegative terms converges exactly when its partial sums are bounded above, its sum is then their supremum, every partial sum is at most the sum, and a convergent series of nonnegative terms has sum (A series of nonnegative terms converges iff its partial sums are bounded, and then the sum is their supremum).
Convergent series add and scale termwise (Convergent series add and scale termwise).
Recursion and induction on (The recursion theorem, The principle of mathematical induction).
Every nonempty subset of has a least element (The well-ordering principle).
(For the sequence is null, and for the sequence diverges to ); convergence is tested against rational and a convergent sequence has exactly one limit (Limits and Cauchy sequences of reals, A sequence has at most one limit); and for (Basic properties of the absolute value).
Ordered-field arithmetic: , so and and , and ; adding a constant and multiplying by a positive preserve an inequality; the order is total and transitive (The multiplicative identity is positive, Order is preserved by adding a constant and by adding inequalities, Sign rules for products and monotonicity of multiplication, Ordered field, Complete ordered field (least-upper-bound property)). These order-arithmetic facts are stated by their sources for the strict order only; the nonstrict forms used below follow by adjoining the equality case, in which the two sides coincide.
Proof
is well defined and takes values in . For every term is by [L1] and [L9], and for every the partial sum satisfies , by [L3], [L4] and [L9]. So by [L3] the series converges, its sum satisfies , and by [L1].
Shift identity: for every . Indeed by [L2] the partial sums satisfy , using from [L1] and [L9]; letting grow and using [L5] and [L2] gives the identity.
Self-similarity of , claim 4. If then for every , so and for every , whence both lie in by [L1]; this gives the inclusion . Conversely let , so for every . By [L1] the first half of lies in and the second in , and by [L9]. If then , so for every one has , that is ; hence and . If then , so for every one has , that is ; hence and . Disjointness is [L1] and [L9], since and .
for every . By induction on ([L6]) the statement "for every , " holds for every : at it is step 1.1 and [L1]; and if it holds at , then for the value is or , so step 1.2 gives in the first case and in the second, so by [L1]. Hence .
The digit recursion. Fix and let be for and for , a definition by cases on the total order ([L9]) and so a genuine function. By [L6] there is with and ; put when and otherwise, so that and for every . Every lies in , by induction on : ; and if then, by step 1.3, either or , and these two cases are exactly and by [L9]; in the first with and , in the second with and .
is injective. Let with ; the set of with is a nonempty subset of , so by [L7] it has a least element , and by symmetry we may take and . By [L5], , and the terms with vanish, so by [L2] this equals with . Every is at least , so the series has nonnegative terms and hence nonnegative sum by [L3], giving by [L2], [L4], [L5] and [L9]. Therefore and .
The value is recovered from the digits. With , and as in step 2.2, put . Then for every , by induction on ([L6]): at both sides are , since by [L2] and ; and if then , using [L1], [L2] and [L9].
Hence , so . Every lies in by step 2.2 and [L1], so by step 3.1 and [L9]. Given a rational , [L8] supplies with for all , and then by [L8]; so . But by [L2], since is the sequence of partial sums of the series defining , and limits are unique by [L8]; therefore with .
By steps 2.1 and 4.1 the image of under is exactly , which with step 1.1 is claim 1; step 2.3 is claim 2, so is a surjection from onto that is injective, that is, a bijection (Injection, surjection, bijection); the map is a bijection from onto , with inverse by [L9], and a composition of bijections is a bijection, which is claim 3; and step 1.3 is claim 4.
Remarks
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The endpoints are the digit sequences that are eventually constant. For instance , , and , the first two by For , , and for the series diverges and the last two by the shift identity of step 1.2. That the eventually constant sequences do not exhaust is the content of lies in the Cantor set and is the endpoint of no removed interval, so the endpoints do not exhaust it ↗, where is computed to be .
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No digit is ever , and that is the whole point. A real of with a ternary expansion using the digit at some place and not representable without it lies in one of the removed middle thirds. The theorem does not assert that every real has a ternary expansion, and it does not need to: the map is constructed from the digits, and the converse direction extracts digits from a point of by the canonical recursion of step 2.2, never by invoking a general expansion theorem.
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Where the choice-freeness lies. The digit extraction is a definition by cases on a total order fed to The recursion theorem, so the whole passage from a point of to its digit sequence is a single function, not a sequence of selections. The same discipline governs Every nonempty perfect subset of is uncountable and Baire category in , by nested intervals with canonically chosen rational endpoints: a countable intersection of dense open sets is dense, so is not a countable union of nowhere dense sets.
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Claim 3 is what makes uncountable. is in bijection with the power set of , which is uncountable by Cantor's theorem: ; that route and the perfect-set route are both recorded in The Cantor set is compact, perfect, uncountable, nowhere dense and of measure zero, and it contains no interval of positive length, so its only nonempty connected subsets are single points.
Depends on
- The Cantor middle-thirds set as the intersection of the sets $C_n$ obtained by removing open middle thirds
- Series, partial sums, convergence and the sum, divergence, and the tail series
- For $|r| < 1$, $\sum_{k \ge 0} r^k = 1/(1-r)$, and for $|r| \ge 1$ the series diverges
- Injection, surjection, bijection
- Integer powers $a^m$
- Laws of integer exponents
- A series of nonnegative terms converges iff its partial sums are bounded, and then the sum is their supremum
- Intervals of $\mathbb{R}$: the nine order-convex forms, nondegeneracy, and length
- Convergent series add and scale termwise
- The recursion theorem
- The principle of mathematical induction
- The well-ordering principle
- For $|r| < 1$ the sequence $r^k$ is null, and for $|r| > 1$ the sequence $|r|^k$ diverges to $+\infty$
- Limits and Cauchy sequences of reals
- A sequence has at most one limit
- Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences
- Complete ordered field (least-upper-bound property)
- Ordered field
- The multiplicative identity is positive
- Order is preserved by adding a constant and by adding inequalities
- Sign rules for products and monotonicity of multiplication
- Basic properties of the absolute value
Used by
- 1/4 lies in the Cantor set and is the endpoint of no removed interval, so the endpoints do not exhaust it Counterexample
- The Cantor function on [0,1], defined on the Cantor set through ternary digits and extended constantly across each removed interval Definition
- ℝ ≈ P(ℕ) in ZF, by the Cantor set for one injection and by the cuts {q ∈ ℚ : q < x} for the other; so | ℝ | = 2^ℵ₀ under the Axiom of Choice Example
- The Cantor function takes the value 1/2 on all of [1/3, 2/3], and its values at 1/9, 1/4 and 7/9 Example
- The Cantor set contains no interval of positive length yet has no isolated point, so every connected subset of it is a single point Example
- The Cantor set is homeomorphic to {0,1}^ℕ with the product of discrete topologies, the ternary digits being the coordinates Example
- Under choice, the Niemytzki plane is Tychonoff and locally metrizable but not normal, paracompact, or metrizable Example
- Which points of [0,1] lie in the Cantor set, read off their ternary expansions, with 1/4 worked out Example
- FALSE: the Cantor set is countable because only countably many intervals were removed False statement
- Assuming choice, normality is not productive: the normal lower-limit line has a nonnormal square Theorem
- The Cantor function is well defined, satisfies c(x) ≤ c(y) whenever x ≤ y, is surjective onto [0,1], and is constant on every interval removed from the Cantor set Theorem
- The Cantor set is compact, perfect, uncountable, nowhere dense and of measure zero, and it contains no interval of positive length, so its only nonempty connected subsets are single points Theorem
Dependency tree · next 3 levels
Direct dependencies and their dependencies through the next three levels: 115 results over 30 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
- Cantor set (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- W. Rudin, Principles of Mathematical Analysis, 3rd ed., Ch. 2 (§2.44) (standard reference, not scraped)
- Stanford Math 205A, Homework 1 (standard reference, not scraped)
- University of Chicago MATH 395 notes (standard reference, not scraped)