A Few Thoughts on the Axiom of Choice

liberalkid
April 15, 2011

1 Informal Stuff
The Axiom of Choice is a bit bizarre, it’s a very natural concept once you understand it. Essentially
it says that if you have an infinite family of sets you can always pick one element from each set.
Oddly enough this turns out to be independent from the standard Zermelo-Frankel set axioms.
That is if F is logically consistent then so is ZF+AC or ZF+6AC. Perhaps more bizarrely AC implies
that you can rigidly cut up a sphere and reassemble it into two spheres.

2 Definitions and Equivalent Forms

Go ahead and assume that I’m always talking about non-empty families of non-empty sets.

2.1 Choices Functions and Examples

S 1. Let Λ be an indexing set and U := {Uλ }λ∈Λ a family of sets indexed by Λ. We call
Definition
f Λ → λ∈Λ Uλ a choice function if for each λ ∈ Λ we have that
:

f (λ) ∈ Uλ .

Here are a couple arbitrary examples of choice functions:

Example 1. Let our indexing set be N and our family of sets RN := {Ri }i∈N . Then a choice
function of this family is just a real-valued sequence.

Example 2. If we have pairs of socks indexed by the natural numbers, we can define a choice
function to pick the left sock.

Example 3. For a more abstract example let U and Λ be as previously defined then the set of all
choice functions on this family is
×
Uλ .
λ∈Λ

This example will be important in terms of equivalent forms. I’ll go ahead and define the axiom
of choice.

Definition 2. The axiom of choice states that for any family of subsets there always exists a choice
function.

1
2.2 Equivalent Forms
I’ll show that the well-ordering theorem and one other more esoteric form are equivalent to AC.

Theorem 1. A well-ordering exists for every set if and only if the axiom of choice is true.

Proof. For the first direction assume that every set has a well-ordering. Then every set has a
well-ordering,
S so we can find a least element in every set. Use this to define a choice function
f : Λ → λ∈Λ ,
f (λ) := min {x}.
x∈Uλ

Then this is a choice function on U.

The other direction you’re probably going to need Zorn’s Lemma, glance at wikipedia if you want
a sketch.

Theorem 2. Every product of a non-empty family of non-empty sets is non-empty if and only if
AC.

Proof. The is a direct consequence of example 3. A choice function is an element of the product of
the sets, so if the axiom of choice is true then there is a choice function. If the product is non-empty
then there’s a choice function.

3 When do we need it?

Let’s consider a few toy examples and see whether or not we actually need the axiom of choice.
Suppose for each interval x ∈ Z, (x, x + 1) ⊂ R we wanted to pick an element. There’s obviously an
infinite number of them. As an aside if we did need to use choice here, it would only be countable
choice since the family is countable. It turns out though that we don’t need to use choice. Instead
if we limit ourselves to the rationals, then we can enumerate the rationals since they’re countable,
right? Then if we intersect the rationals with (x, x + 1) we can pick the first element of the
enumeration to be in the interval. What if we changed the problem a bit and wanted to pick an
irrational? We could do the same trick again just look at Q + π.

Sadly I can’t think of an example of the top of my head where you need to use the axiom of choice.
Aside from constructing a set that isn’t Lebesgue measurable, which is a lot of work. Generally
it has to be a reasonably abstract setting. Where you have a family of non-empty disjoint sets,
otherwise you can define a choice function by picking the same element in each set. Hope this helps,
maybe it doesn’t. I tried.