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In mathematics, a nowhere continuous function, also called an everywhere discontinuous function, is a function that is not continuous at any point of its domain.If is a function from real numbers to real numbers, then is nowhere continuous if for each point there is some > such that for every >, we can find a point such that | | < and | () |.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A set-valued function that is both upper and lower hemicontinuous is said to be continuous in an analogy to the property of the same name for single-valued functions. To explain both notions, consider a sequence a of points in a domain, and a sequence b of points in the range.
So, if the open mapping theorem holds for ; i.e., is an open mapping, then is continuous and then is continuous (as the composition of continuous maps). For example, the above argument applies if f {\displaystyle f} is a linear operator between Banach spaces with closed graph, or if f {\displaystyle f} is a map with closed graph between compact ...
When we speak of a function being continuous on an interval, we mean that the function is continuous at every point of the interval. In contrast, uniform continuity is a global property of f {\displaystyle f} , in the sense that the standard definition of uniform continuity refers to every point of X {\displaystyle X} .