How can the Cantor set be uncountable, yet its complement is the union of only countably many disjoint open intervals?

327 Views Asked by At

$C$ = Cantor set. $C$ is closed, so $C^c$ is the countable union of disjoint open intervals. So let $$C^c = \bigcup\limits_{\substack{i~\in~\mathbb{N} \\}} A_i $$

where $A_i$ are disjoint open intervals.

For each $i \in \mathbb{N},\ A_i\ $ differs from a closed set by just two points, namely the endpoints of the interval $A_i.$ For each $i \in \mathbb{N},\ $ let

$$ B_i = \{x_{i1}, x_{i2} \} = \{ \text{ the two endpoints of } A_i \}. $$

Then $\left|\bigcup\limits_{\substack{i~\in~\mathbb{N} \\}} B_i\right| \leq 2 \left|\mathbb{N}\right| $ is countable. However, $\bigcup\limits_{\substack{i~\in~\mathbb{N} \\}} B_i$ is surely the Cantor set, which is uncountable.

Something is incorrect in all of this, but what?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

2
On BEST ANSWER

There are lots of points in the Cantor set other than the end points of the intervals $A_i$. Infinite sums of the type $\sum \frac {a_i} {3^{i}}$ ($a_i \in \{0,2\}$) are in $C$ and they are not end points unless the sum reduces to a finite sum.