Restrictions of continuous functions

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Publication:2655784



Abstract: Given a continuous real-valued function on [0, 1], and a closed subset E subset [0, 1] we denote by f E the restriction of f to E, that is, the function defined only on E that takes the same values as f at every point of E >. The restriction f E will typically be "better behaved" than f . It may have bounded variation when f doesn't, it may have a better modulus of continuity than f, it may be monotone when f is not, etc. All this clearly depends on f and on E, and the questions that we discuss here are about the existence, for every f, or every f in some class, of "substantial" sets E such that f E has bounded total variation, is monotone, or satisfies a given modulus of continuity. The notion of "substantial" that we use is that of either Hausdorff or Minkowski dimensions.


This paper deals with various problems concerning the restriction of real-valued functions of a real variable. The authors are concerned firstly with restrictions of functions of bounded variation. In this framework they prove that every continuous real-valued function on \([0,1]\) has a bounded variation on some set of Hausdorff dimension \(1/2\). It is also proven that this is optimal by constructing an appropriate lacunary series whose sum has unbounded variation on every closed set of Minkowski dimension bigger than \(1/2\) and hence on every set of Hausdorff dimension bigger than \(1/2\). The next section deals with restrictions that satisfy a Hölder condition with parameter \(\alpha\in(0,1)\). Next, the authors construct continuous functions \(f\) that satisfy a Hölder-\(\alpha\) condition for all \(\alpha < 1\). The case of monotone restrictions of continuous functions is also considered in the present paper. Some open problems conclude the paper under review. The exposition is elementary and self-contained, not requiring any background material.











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