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Proofs of Irrationality
“Irrational numbers are those real numbers which are not rational numbers!”
Def.1: Rational Number
A rational number is a real number which can be expressed in the form of where
and
are both integers relatively prime to each other and
being non-zero.
Following two statements are equivalent to the definition 1.
1. is rational if and only if
and
are integers relatively prime to each other and
does not equal to zero.
2. .
The Area of a Disk
[This post is under review.]
If you are aware of elementary facts of geometry, then you might know that the area of a disk with radius is
.
The radius is actually the measure(length) of a line joining the center of disk and any point on the circumference of the disk or any other circular lamina. Radius for a disk is always same, irrespective of the location of point at circumference to which you are joining the center of disk. The area of disk is defined as the ‘measure of surface‘ surrounded by the round edge (circumference) of the disk.
The area of a disk can be derived by breaking it into a number of identical parts of disk as units — calculating their areas and summing them up till disk is reformed. There are many ways to imagine a unit of disk. We can imagine the disk to be made up of several concentric very thin rings increasing in radius from zero to the radius of disc. In this method we can take an arbitrary ring, calculate its area and then in similar manner, induce areas of other rings -sum them till whole disk is obtained. (more…)
Triangle Inequality
Triangle inequality has its name on a geometrical fact that the length of one side of a triangle can never be greater than the sum of the lengths of other two sides of the triangle. If ,
and
be the three sides of a triangle, then neither
can be greater than
, nor
can be greater than
, nor
can be than
.

- Triangle
Consider the triangle in the image, side shall be equal to the sum of other two sides
and
, only if the triangle behaves like a straight line. Thinking practically, one can say that one side is formed by joining the end points of two other sides.
In modulus form, represents the side
if
represents side
and
represents side
. A modulus is nothing, but the distance of a point on the number line from point zero.
For example, the distance of and
from
on the initial line is
. So we may write that
.
Triangle inequalities are not only valid for real numbers but also for complex numbers, vectors and in Euclidean spaces. In this article, I shall discuss them separately. (more…)
A Trip to Mathematics: Part III Relations and Functions
Read these statements carefully:
‘Michelle is the wife of Barak Obama.’
‘John is the brother of Nick.’
‘Robert is the father of Marry.’
‘Ram is older than Laxman.’
‘Mac is the product of Apple Inc.’
After reading these statements, you will realize that first ‘Noun’ of each sentence is some how related to other. We say that each one noun is in a RELATIONSHIP to other. Mischell is related to Barak Obama, as wife. John is related to Nick, as brother. Robert is related to Marry, as father. Ram is related to Laxman in terms of age(seniority). Mac is related to Apple Inc. as a product.These relations are also used in Mathematics, but a little variations; like ‘alphabets’ or ‘numbers’ are used at place of some noun and mathematical relations are used between them. Some good examples of relations are:
is less than
is greater than
is equal to
is an element of
belongs to
divides
etc. etc.
Some examples of regular mathematical statements which we encounter daily are:
4<6 : 4 is less than 6.
5=5 : 5 is equal to 5.
6/3 : 3 divides 6.
For a general use, we can represent a statement as:
”some x is related to y”
Here ‘is related to’ phrase is nothing but a particular mathematical relation. For mathematical convenience, we write ”x is related to y” as . x and y are two objects in a certain order and they can also be used as ordered pairs (x,y).
and
are the same and will be treated as the same term in further readings. If
represents the relation motherhood, then
means that Jane is mother of John.
All the relations we discussed above, were in between two objects (x,y), thus they are called Binary Relations. is a binary relation between a and b. Similarly,
is a ternary (3-nary) relation on ordered pair (x,y,z). In general a relation working on an n-tuple
is an n-ary relation working on n-tuple.
We shall now discuss Binary Relations more rigorously, since they have solid importance in process of defining functions and also in higher studies. In a binary relation, , the first object of the ordered pair is called the the domain of relation ρ and is defined by
and also the second object is called the range of the relation ρ and is defined by
.
There is one more thing to discuss about relations and that is about equivalence relation.
A relation is equivalence if it satisfies three properties, Symmetric, Reflexive and Transitive.
I mean to say that if a relation is symmetric, reflexive and transitive then the relation is equivalence. You might be thinking that what these terms (symmetric, reflexive and transitive) mean here. Let me explain them separately:
A relation is symmetric: Consider three sentences “Jen is the mother of John.”; “John is brother of Nick.” and “Jen, John and Nick live in a room altogether.”
In first sentence Jen has a relationship of motherhood to John. But can John have the same relation to Jen? Can John be mother of Jen? The answer is obviously NO! This type of relations are not symmetric. Now consider second statement. John has a brotherhood relationship with Nick. But can Nick have the same relation to John? Can Nick be brother of John? The answer is simply YES! Thus, both the sentences “John is the brother of Nick.” and “Nick is the brother of John.” are the same. We may say that both are symmetric sentences. And here the relation of ‘brotherhood’ is symmetric in nature. Again LIVING WITH is also symmetric (it’s your take to understand how?).
Now let we try to write above short discussion in general and mathematical forms. Let X and Y be two objects (numbers or people or any living or non-living thing) and have a relation ρ between them. Then we write that X is related by a relation ρ , to Y. Or X ρ Y.
And if ρ is a symmetric relation, we might say that Y is (also) related by a relation ρ to X. Or Y ρ X.
So, in one line; is true.
A relation is reflexive if X is related to itself by a relation. i.e., . Consider the statement “Jen, John and Nick live in a house altogether.” once again. Is the relation of living reflexive? How to check? Ask like, Jen lives with Jen, true? Yes! Jen lives there.
A relation is transitive, means that some objects X, Y, Z are such that if X is related to Y by the relation, Y is related to Z by the relation, then X is also related to Z by the same relation.
i.e., . For example, the relationship of brotherhood is transitive. (Why?) Now we are able to define the equivalence relation.
We say that a relation ρ is an equivalence relation if following properties are satisfied: (i)
(ii)
(iii) .
Functions: Let f be a relation (we are using f at the place of earlier used ρ ) on an ordered pair . We can write xfy, a relation. This relation is called a function if and only if for every x, there is always a single value of y. I mean to say that if
is true and
is also true, then always
. This definition is standard but there are some drawbacks of this definition, which we shall discuss in the beginning of Real Analysis .
Many synonyms for the word ‘function’ are used at various stages of mathematics, e.g. Transformation, Map or Mapping, Operator, Correspondence. As already said, in ordered pair (x,y), x is called the element of domain of the function (and X the domain of the function) and y is called the element in range or co-domain of the function (and Y the range of the function).
Here I will stop myself. I don’t want a post to be long (specially when writing on basic mathematics) that reader feel it boring. The intermediate mathematics of functions is planned to be discussed in Calculus and advanced part in functional analysis. Please note that I am regularly revising older articles and trying to maintain the accuracy and completeness. If you feel that there is any fault or incompleteness in a post then please make a comment on respective post. If you are interested in writing a guest article on this blog, then kindly email me at mdnb[at]live[dot]in.
Must Read
- Equivalence relations (gowers.wordpress.com)
Study Notes Announcements and more…
Announcement
Hi all!
I know some friends, who don’t know what mathematics in real is, always blame me for the language of the blog. It is very complicated and detailed. I understand that it is. But MY DIGITAL NOTEBOOK is mainly prepared for my study and research on mathematical sciences. So, I don’t care about what people say (SAID) about the
A Torus
content and how many hits did my posts get. I feel happy in such a way that MY DIGITAL NOTEBOOK has satisfied me at its peak-est level. I would like to thank WordPress.com for their brilliant blogging tools and to my those friends, teachers and classmates who always encourage me about my passion. For me the most important thing is my study. More I learn, more I will go ahead. So, today (I mean tonight) I have decided to write some lecture-notes (say them study-notes, since I am not a lecturer) on MY DIGITAL NOTEBOOK. I have planned to write on Group Theory at first and then on Real Analysis. And this post is just to introduce you with some fundamental notations which will be used in those study-notes.
Notations
Conditionals and Operators
: Relation
holds under the condition
.
: The expression
is mathematically identical to
.
: The expression a is mathematically different from
.
: The quantity
is greater than quantity
.
: The quantity
is greater than or equal to the quantity
.
: The quantity
is less than quantity
.
: The quantity
is less than or equal to quantity
.
: Statement
defines statement
.
: a and b.
: a or b.
: for all
.
: [there] exists.
: If and only if.
Sets & Domains
: A finite set with some elements
.
: An infinite set with elements
: A sequence of elements `listElement` with some `domainSpecifications` in the set. For example,
:
is an element of the set A.
: a is not an element of the set A.
: The number x lies within the specified interval
.
: The number x does not belong to the specified interval
. Standard Set Notations
: the set of natural numbers
: The set of positive natural numbers:
: The set of integers
: The set of rational numbers
: The set of real numbers
: The set of complex numbers
: The set of prime numbers.
: The empty set.
: The ordered set of sets
and
.
: Factorial of n:
Other mathematical notations, constants and terms will be introduced as their need.
For Non-Mathematicians:
Don’t worry I have planned to post more fun. Let’s see how the time proceeds!
Some Other GoodReads:
- Using math symbols in wordpress pages and posts – LaTex (1) (etidhor.wordpress.com)
- Do complex numbers really exist? (math.stackexchange.com)
- LaTeX Typesetting – Basic Mathematics (r-bloggers.com)
Everywhere Continuous Non-derivable Function
Weierstrass had drawn attention to the fact that there exist functions which are continuous for every value of but do not possess a derivative for any value. We now consider the celebrated function given by Weierstrass to show this fact. It will be shown that if
where
is an odd positive integer,
and
, then the function
is continuous
but not finitely derivable for any value of
.
G.H. Hardy improved this result to allow .
We have and
is convergent. Thus, by Wierstrass’s
-Test for uniform Convergence the series (1), is uniformly convergent in every interval. Hence
is continuous
.
Again, we have
Let, now, be any positive integer. Also let
denote the sum of the
terms and
, the remainder after
terms, of the series (2), so that
. By Lagrange’s mean value theorem, we have
,
. We shall now consider
.
So far we have taken as an arbitrary but we shall now choose it as follows:
We write
, where
is the integer nearest to
and
.
Therefore. We choose,
, so that
i.e.,which
for
Now,
Thus .
for
, is an odd integer and
is an integer.
Therefore,
Now each term of series in (4) is greater than or equal to 0 and, in particular, the first term is positive,
Thus
As , therefore
is positive.
Thus we see that when so that
, the expression
takes arbitrary large values. Hence,
does not exist or is at least not finite.
Reference
A course of mathematical analysis
SHANTI NARAYAN
PK MITTAL
S. Chand Co.
Dedekind’s Theory of Real Numbers
Intro
Let be the set of rational numbers. It is well known that
is an ordered field and also the set
is equipped with a relation called “less than” which is an order relation. Between two rational numbers there exists infinite number of elements of
. Thus the system of rational numbers seems to be dense and so apparently complete. But it is quite easy to show that there exist some numbers (?) (e.g.,
etc.) which are not rational. For example, let we have to prove that
is not a rational number or in other words, there exist no rational number whose square is 2. To do that if possible, purpose that
is a rational number. Then according to the definition of rational numbers
, where p & q are relatively prime integers. Hence,
or
. This implies that p is even. Let
, then
or
. Thus
is also even if 2 is rational. But since both are even, they are not relatively prime, which is a contradiction. Hence
is not a rational number and the proof is complete. Similarly we can prove that why other irrational numbers are not rational. From this proof, it is clear that the set
is not complete and dense and that there are some gaps between the rational numbers in form of irrational numbers. This remark shows the necessity of forming a more comprehensive system of numbers other that the system of rational number. The elements of this extended set will be called a real number. The following three approaches have been made for defining a real number.
- Dedekind’s Theory
- Cantor’s Theory
- Method of Decimal Representation
The method known as Dedekind’s Theory will be discussed in this not, which is due to R. Dedekind (1831-1916). To discuss this theory we need the following definitions:
Rational number A number which can be represented as
where p is an integer and q is a non-zero integer i.e.,
and
and p and q are
relatively prime as their greatest common divisor is 1, i.e.,.
Ordered Field: Here,
is, an algebraic structure on which the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication & division by a non-zero number can be carried out.
Least or Smallest Element: Let
and
. Then
is said to be a least element of
if (i)
and (ii)
for every
.
Greatest or Largest Element: Let
and
. Then
is said to be a least element of
if (i)
and (ii)
for every
.
Dedekind’s Section (Cut) of the Set of All the Rational Numbers
Since the set of rational numbers is an ordered field, we may consider the rational numbers to be arranged in order on straight line from left to right. Now if we cut this line by some point , then the set of rational numbers is divided into two classes
and
. The rational numbers on the left, i.e. the rational numbers less than the number corresponding to the point of cut
are all in
and the rational numbers on the right, i.e. The rational number greater than the point are all in
. If the point
is not a rational number then every rational number either belongs to
or
. But if
is a rational number, then it may be considered as an element of
.
Def.
Real Numbers:
Let
satisfying the following conditions:
is non-empty proper subset of
.
,
and
then this implies that
.
doesn’t have a greatest element.
Let
. Then the ordered pair
is called a section or a cut of the set of rational numbers. This section of the set of rational numbers is called a real number.
Notation: The set of real numbers is denote by
.
Let then
and
are called Lower and Upper Class of
respectively. These classes will be denoted by
and
respectively.


