Compactness in the context of Natural numbers


Compactness in the context of Natural numbers

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⭐ Core Definition: Compactness

In mathematics, specifically general topology, compactness is a property that seeks to generalize the notion of a closed and bounded subset of Euclidean space. The idea is that every infinite sequence of points has limiting values. For example, the real line is not compact since the sequence of natural numbers has no real limiting value. The open interval (0,1) is not compact because it excludes the limiting values 0 and 1, whereas the closed interval [0,1] is compact. Similarly, the space of rational numbers is not compact, because every irrational number is the limit of the rational numbers that are lower than it. On the other hand, the extended real number line is compact, since it contains both infinities. There are many ways to make this heuristic notion precise. These ways usually agree in a metric space, but may not be equivalent in other topological spaces.

One such generalization is that a topological space is sequentially compact if every infinite sequence of points sampled from the space has an infinite subsequence that converges to some point of the space. The Bolzano–Weierstrass theorem states that a subset of Euclidean space is compact in this sequential sense if and only if it is closed and bounded. Thus, if one chooses an infinite number of points in the closed unit interval [0, 1], some of those points will get arbitrarily close to some real number in that space. For instance, some of the numbers in the sequence 1/2, 4/5, 1/3, 5/6, 1/4, 6/7, ... accumulate to 0 (while others accumulate to 1). Since neither 0 nor 1 are members of the open unit interval (0, 1), those same sets of points would not accumulate to any point of it, so the open unit interval is not compact. Although subsets (subspaces) of Euclidean space can be compact, the entire space itself is not compact, since it is not bounded. For example, considering (the real number line), the sequence of points 0,  1,  2,  3, ... has no subsequence that converges to any real number.

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Compactness in the context of Brouwer fixed-point theorem

Brouwer's fixed-point theorem is a fixed-point theorem in topology, named after L. E. J. (Bertus) Brouwer. It states that for any continuous function mapping a nonempty compact convex set to itself, there is a point such that . The simplest forms of Brouwer's theorem are for continuous functions from a closed interval in the real numbers to itself or from a closed disk to itself. A more general form than the latter is for continuous functions from a nonempty convex compact subset of Euclidean space to itself.

Among hundreds of fixed-point theorems, Brouwer's is particularly well known, due in part to its use across numerous fields of mathematics. In its original field, this result is one of the key theorems characterizing the topology of Euclidean spaces, along with the Jordan curve theorem, the hairy ball theorem, the invariance of dimension and the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. This gives it a place among the fundamental theorems of topology. The theorem is also used for proving deep results about differential equations and is covered in most introductory courses on differential geometry. It appears in unlikely fields such as game theory. In economics, Brouwer's fixed-point theorem and its extension, the Kakutani fixed-point theorem, play a central role in the proof of existence of general equilibrium in market economies as developed in the 1950s by economics Nobel prize winners Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu.

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Compactness in the context of Maurice Fréchet

René Maurice Fréchet (French: [ʁəne mɔʁis fʁeʃɛ, moʁ-]; 2 September 1878 – 4 June 1973) was a French mathematician. He made major contributions to general topology and was the first to define metric spaces. He also made several important contributions to the field of statistics and probability, as well as calculus. His dissertation opened the entire field of functionals on metric spaces and introduced the notion of compactness. Independently of Riesz, he discovered the representation theorem in the space of Lebesgue square integrable functions. He is often referred to as the founder of the theory of abstract spaces.

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Compactness in the context of Parameter space

The parameter space is the space of all possible parameter values that define a particular mathematical model. It is also sometimes called weight space, and is often a subset of finite-dimensional Euclidean space.

In statistics, parameter spaces are particularly useful for describing parametric families of probability distributions. They also form the background for parameter estimation. In the case of extremum estimators for parametric models, a certain objective function is maximized or minimized over the parameter space. Theorems of existence and consistency of such estimators require some assumptions about the topology of the parameter space. For instance, compactness of the parameter space, together with continuity of the objective function, suffices for the existence of an extremum estimator.

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