Stationary preserving permutations are the identity on a club

Mar 20 2017, 23:50

This is not something particularly interesting, I think. But it's a nice exercise in Fodor's lemma.

Theorem. Suppose that \(\kappa\) is regular and uncountable, and \(\pi\colon\kappa\to\kappa\) is a bijection mapping stationary sets to stationary sets. Then there is a club \(C\subseteq\kappa\) such that \(\pi\restriction C=\operatorname{id}\).

Vsauce on cardinals and ordinals

Apr 09 2016, 21:11

To the readers of my blog, it should come as no surprise that I have a lot of appreciation to what Michael Stevens is doing in Vsauce. In the past Michael, who is not a mathematician, created an excellent video about the Banach-Tarski paradox, as well another one on supertasks. And now he tackled infinite cardinals and ordinals.

You can find the video here:

Cofinality and the axiom of choice

Nov 29 2015, 22:35

What is cofinality of a[n infinite] cardinal? If we think about the cardinals as ordinals, as we should in the case the axiom of choice holds, then the cofinality of a cardinal is just the smallest cardinality of an unbounded set. It can be thought of as the least ordinal from which there is an unbounded function into our cardinal. Or it could be thought as the smallest cardinality of a partition whose parts are all "small".

Not assuming the axiom of choice the definition of cofinality remains the same, if we restrict ourselves to ordinals and \(\aleph\) numbers. But why should we? There is a rich world out there, new colors that were not on the choice-y rainbow from before. So anything which is inherently based on the ordering properties of the ordinals should not be considered as the definition of an ordinal. So first let's recall the two ways we can order cardinals without choice.

On the Partition Principle

Dec 20 2014, 20:45

Last Wednesday I gave a talk about the Partition Principle in our students seminar. This talk covered the historical background of the oldest open problem in set theory, and two proofs that for a long time I avoided learning. I promised to post a summary of the talk here. So here it is. The historical data was taken from the paper by Banaschewski and Moore, "The dual Cantor-Bernstein theorem and the partition principle." (MR1072073) as well Moore's wonderful book "Zermelo’s Axiom of Choice" (which has a Dover reprint!).

To Colloops a cardinal

Oct 05 2014, 21:24

This is nothing new, but it's a choice-y way of thinking about it. Which is really what I enjoy doing.

Definition. Let \(V\) be a model of \(\ZFC\), and \(\PP\in V\) be a notion of forcing. We say that a cardinal \(\kappa\) is "colloopsed" by \(\PP\) (to \(\mu\)) if every \(V\)-generic filter \(G\) adds a bijection from \(\mu\) onto \(\kappa\), but there is an intermediate \(N\subseteq V[G]\) satisfying \(\ZF\) in which there is no such bijection, but there is one for each \(\lambda\lt\kappa\).

Anti-anti Banach-Tarski arguments

Sep 22 2014, 13:31

Many people, more often than not these are people from analysis or worse (read: physicists, which in general are not bad, but I am bothered when they think they have a say in how theoretical mathematics should be done), pseudo-mathematical, non-mathematical, philosophical communities, and from time to time actual mathematicians, would say ridiculous things like "We need to omit the axiom of choice, and keep only Dependent Choice, since the axiom of choice is a source for constant bookkeeping in the form of non-measurable sets".

People often like to cite the paradoxical decomposition of the unit sphere given by Banach-Tarski. "Yes, it doesn't make any sense, therefore the axiom of choice needs to be omitted".

The cardinal trichotomy: finite, countable, and uncoutnable.

Jul 18 2013, 03:00

There is a special trichotomy for cardinality of sets. Sets are either finite, or countably infinite, or uncountable. It's an interesting distinction, and it has a very deep root -- at least in my perspective -- in the role of first-order logic.

Finite objects can be characterized in full using first-order logic. The fact that you can write down how many elements a set have, is a huge thing. For example, every finite structure of a first-order logic language has a categorical axiomatization. If the language is finite, then the axiomatization is finite as well.

Provable Equality Of Exponentiation

May 30 2013, 01:01

It's an almost trivial theorem of cardinal arithmetics in \(\ZF\) that given four cardinals, \(\frak p,q,r,s\) such that \(\frak p<q,\ r<s\) we have \(\frak p^r\leq q^s\).

In a recent question on math.SE some user has asked whether or not we always have a strict inequality. Everyone sufficiently familiar with the basics of independence results would know that it is consistent to have \(2^{\aleph_0}=2^{\aleph_1}=\aleph_2\), in which case taking \(\mathfrak{p=r}=\aleph_0,\ \mathfrak{q=s}=\aleph_1\) gives us equality. But it's also trivial to see that we can always pick cardinals whose difference is large enough to keep the inequality true.

Vector Spaces and Antichains of Cardinals in Models of Set Theory

Feb 11 2013, 03:28

I finally uploaded my M.Sc. thesis titled “Vector Spaces and Antichains of Cardinals in Models of Set Theory”.

There are several changed from the printed and submitted version, but those are minor. The Papers page lists them.

The Philosophy of Cardinality: Pathologies or not?

Jan 20 2013, 01:18

What are numbers? For the layman numbers are those things we use for counting and measuring. The complex numbers are on the edge of being numbers, but that's only because they are taught in high-schools and many people still consider them imaginary (despite them having some reasonably applicative uses).

But a mathematician knows that a number is basically a notion which represents a quantity. We have so many numbers that I don't even know where to begin if I wanted to list them. Luckily most of the readers (I suppose) are mathematicians and so I don't have to.

First Post

Oct 19 2012, 05:46

Well... This is my first post on this blog, and I have absolutely no idea how to start it.

Should I make it about myself? about my life? about my academic status? How I about I tell cool stories from my life, perhaps inebriated adventures? army experiences? Maybe I should write about mathematics. Perhaps some nice proof or some nice theorem?