These functions like the Cantor function and the continuous-but-not-differentiable function are all well and good, but contrived - the only place you ever see them is as counterexamples. Here is a function that has many uses in Number Theory, and still manages to have a strange property or two. Let
x=h/k with h and k integers, k>0. Define s(x)=sumk−1c=1((c/k))((ch/k))
Now for the strange properties.
Hickerson, Continued fractions and density results for Dedekind sums, J Reine Angew Math 290 (1977) 113-116, MR 55 #12611, proved that the graph of s is dense in the plane.
With Nick Phillips, I proved (Lines full of Dedekind sums, Bull London Math Soc 36 (2004) 547-552, MR 2005m:11075) that, with the exception of the line y=x/12, every line through the origin with rational slope passes through infinitely many points on the graph of s. We suspect that the points are dense on those lines, though we could only prove it for the line y=x.
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