Abbott Dimension, Mathematics Inspired by Flatland

DOI10.1080/00029890.2023.2275997MaRDI QIDQ6189657zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Jeremy Siegert

Publication date 8 February 2024

Published in The American Mathematical Monthly (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.00647

zbMATH Keywords

dimension

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Dimension theory in general topology (54F45)

Abstract: What is the "right way" to define dimension? Mathematicians working in the early and middle $20$th-century formalized three intuitive definitions of dimension that all turned out to be equivalent on separable metric spaces. But were these definitions the "right" ones? What would it mean to have the "right" definition of dimension? In this paper we attempt to inspire thought about these questions by introducing Abbott dimension, a geometrically intuitive definition of dimension based on Edwin Abbott's $1884$ novella emph{Flatland}. We show that while Abbott dimension has intuitive appeal, it does not always agree with the classical definitions of dimension on separable metric spaces.

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