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I'd like to know if my following proof for the integrabilty of Thomae's function in $[0,1]$ is correct: recall that $T:[0,1]\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ is defined as

$$T(x)=\begin{cases} 0 & x\in[0,1]\setminus\mathbb{Q}\\ \frac{1}{q} & x=\frac{p}{q},\;p,q\text{ are coprime} \end{cases}$$

now, my argument is as follows: let $\varepsilon>0$. for every partition $P$ of $[0,1]$ the lower sum is $0$, so I wish to find a Partition $P$ such that

$$U(T,P)<\varepsilon$$

we'll denote the partition of $[0,1]$ to $n$ equal segments by $P_{n}$. now, we see that

$$U(T,P_n) =\sum_{i=1}^n M_i(T)\cdot\Delta x_i =\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n M_i(T)$$

so now we need to understand the growth rate of the term $\sum_{i=1}^{n}M_{i}\left(T\right)$ : if $\phi(n)$ is euler totient function, so we can say that there are $\phi(m)$ values of $x$ such that $f(x)=1/m$. however, we know that for every natural number $m$, $\phi(m)<m$ so if look at

$$\sum_{i=1}^{S(n)} M_i(T)$$

where $S(n)=\frac{n(n+1)}{2}$

we get that

$\sum_{i=1}^{S(n)}M_i(T)<n+1$ (including zero here)

since we have no more than $m$ of $\frac{1}{m}$ terms in the sum, so we have a $1$ from $M_{1}(T)$ and a $1$ from $M_{n}(T)$, and the next 2 biggest terms must add up to something strictly smaller than 1, since $\frac{1}{2}$ appears less than twice, and the next three biggest terms after those two must also add up to something smaller than $1$, because we already added the terms that could be $\geq\frac{1}{2}$, so all those three terms must be $\le\frac{1}{3}$ but there are less than three $\frac{1}{3}$ appearances and the inequality above follows by induction.

so, it follows that

$$U\left(T,P_{S(n)}\right)=\frac{2}{n(n+1)} \sum_{i=1}^{S\left(n\right)} M_i(T)<\frac{2}{n}$$

now, for $N$ large enough we get a partition $P_{S(N)}$ like we want.

I think this proof is quite nice, But I'd like to hear your opinions and of course to know whether it is correct. thank you!

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  • $\begingroup$ Looks good, I would even give it the superlative: פיקס $\endgroup$
    – NadavLif
    Commented Oct 4, 2020 at 19:10
  • $\begingroup$ Isn't $M_i(T) = \sup \left\{T(x) | \frac{i-1}{S(n)} \leqslant \frac{i}{S(n)} \right\}$ in the upper sum? Why then does $M_1(T) = 1$? Why do you use a partition with a triangular number $S(n)$ as the number of subintervals to begin with? It is not too difficult to estimate $\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n M_i(T)$ by noting that no more than $2 K$ subintervals have $M_i \geqslant 1/m$ where $K$ counts the number of elements in $\{1,1/2,1/3,\ldots, p/q,\ldots, (m-1)/m\}$. I'm not following your argument very well as written. $\endgroup$
    – RRL
    Commented Oct 4, 2020 at 23:57
  • $\begingroup$ We don't even need to know what $K$ is other than that it is finite. $\endgroup$
    – RRL
    Commented Oct 5, 2020 at 0:01
  • $\begingroup$ $M_{1}(T)=1$ because this interval contains $0$, and $f(0)=1$. my choice to use triangular numbers is so I could group the first two biggest terms of the sum (which are both 1, at 0 and 1) and then the next biggest two, which must together add up to be less than 1 since $f(x)=\frac{1}{2}$ for less than two values, and than I group the next three biggest terms and so on which gives the triangular numbers and allows me to say that the sum up to the n'th triangular number is smaller than $n$. I'm aware of the proof you give here, I'm suggesting a different one. $\endgroup$
    – Oria
    Commented Oct 5, 2020 at 0:15
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    $\begingroup$ There could be two subintervals where $M_i = 1/2$ but that doesn't matter and the argument is correct after that. Nice job. $\endgroup$
    – RRL
    Commented Oct 5, 2020 at 0:25

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