Nowhere-monotone differentiable functions and bounded variation (Q2227578)

The present paper deals with functions which are called differentiable monsters. This notion is considered and a corresponding brief survey and basic known results are given. Also, special attention is paid to peculiarities of such functions. The author notes that ``one of the simplest constructions of a differentiable monster -- a function from a nontrivial interval \(J\subseteq \mathbb R\) into \(\mathbb R\) that is everywhere differentiable but monotone on no interval -- is as a difference of two strictly increasing differentiable functions, each with its derivative vanishing on a dense subset of its domain. '' Also, Pompeiu-like functions are discussed. The main purpose of this research is ``to characterize differentiable monsters that can be represented in such a ``nice'' way as those that are a difference of two increasing everywhere differentiable functions''. A differentiable monster which is not of bounded variation is constructed. ``So differentiable monsters clearly do not admit such ``nice'' representation. On the other hand, every differentiable monster \(f:J\to \mathbb R\) contains many restrictions that admit ``nice'' representation: for every non-empty open \(U\subseteq J\), there is a non-trivial interval \(I\subseteq U\) such that \(f\upharpoonright_I\) is a difference of two increasing differentiable maps, each with its derivative vanishing on a dense subset of \(I\).'' Finally, a certain remark and some examples ``describing'' the inclusive relations among some subclasses of Pompeiu-like functions are given. Several open problems are noted.