Friday, 10 October 2008

fa.functional analysis - Baire category theorem

Let's call the following conditions (1): X is a complete metric space with metric d, X=cupin=1nftyAn. Let barA denote the closure of A.



Let's call the following statement (2): at least one of the barAn contains a ball.



Baire category theorem gives:



Fact1:
(1) Rightarrow (2)



Now take any xinX and consider the closed ball B=B(x,delta)=y:d(x,y)ledelta. This is a complete metric space itself and it is covered by AncapB. Thus these sets satisfy (1). Fact1 gives us an n such that the closure of AncapB contains a ball in B. Thus, we have strengthened Fact1 to



Fact1': (1) Rightarrow (2')



where (2') is: For every xinX, every neighborhood of x contains a ball that is contained in one of the barAn.



Question: Can (2') be strengthened further? Here are some example statements, both of which are too strong:



  • For every x, there is a delta such that B(x,delta) is contained in one of the barAn

  • For every x, there is an An such that barAn contains an open set G with d(x,G)=0.


Many thanks for the responses. The motivation for this question was as follows.



1) What does it mean for a set A to have a closure with empty interior? Take an element
ainbarA. This means that a is either in A or there is a sequence in A that converges to a. This can be rephrased as a is a point that can be approximated with infinite precision by A.' If barA has no interior, perturbing a by a small amount will give an a, such that a is a finite distance away from barA. Thus, a will be a point that can only be approximated by A with finite precision. Then, one can think of A as a multi resolution grid with discontinuous approximation capability: you perturb any point that can be approximated infinitely well by it and you get a point that can only be approximated with finite precision.



2) X itself can be thought of as the perfect multi resolution grid for itself: every point xinX is well approximated by X, and perturbing x will not change this. The way I wanted to think of X=cupin=1nftyAn was this: for every xinX, one of the An provides a multiresolution grid around x that has continuous approximation capability. I wanted to think, similar to Leonid's response, that the set of X where this is not possible was to be in some sense to be exceptional.

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