Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Discontinuous functions may be discontinuous in a restricted way, giving rise to the concept of directional continuity (or right and left continuous functions) and semi-continuity. Roughly speaking, a function is right-continuous if no jump occurs when the limit point is approached from the right.
However, not all functions are continuous. If a function is not continuous at a limit point (also called "accumulation point" or "cluster point") of its domain, one says that it has a discontinuity there. The set of all points of discontinuity of a function may be a discrete set, a dense set, or even the entire domain of the function.
Blumberg theorem – even if a real function : is nowhere continuous, there is a dense subset of such that the restriction of to is continuous. Thomae's function (also known as the popcorn function) – a function that is continuous at all irrational numbers and discontinuous at all rational numbers.
Then f is a non-decreasing function on [a, b], which is continuous except for jump discontinuities at x n for n ≥ 1. In the case of finitely many jump discontinuities, f is a step function . The examples above are generalised step functions; they are very special cases of what are called jump functions or saltus-functions.
A natural follow-up question one might ask is if there is a function which is continuous on the rational numbers and discontinuous on the irrational numbers. This turns out to be impossible. The set of discontinuities of any function must be an F σ set. If such a function existed, then the irrationals would be an F σ set.
The Heine–Cantor theorem asserts that every continuous function on a compact set is uniformly continuous. In particular, if a function is continuous on a closed bounded interval of the real line, it is uniformly continuous on that interval. The Darboux integrability of continuous functions follows almost immediately from this theorem.
The Dirichlet function can be constructed as the double pointwise limit of a sequence of continuous functions, as follows: , = (( (!))) for integer j and k. This shows that the Dirichlet function is a Baire class 2 function.
v. limits of functions of a continuous variable. continuous and discontinuous functions; vi. derivatives and integrals; vii. additional theorems in the differential and integral calculus; viii. the convergence of infinite series and infinite integrals; ix. the logarithmic, exponential and circular functions of a real variable