182
Mathematical Concepts
Figure 1 How to cover with squares
so that no four overlap.
of disjoint closed sets A and B, you can find disjoint
open sets U and V with A ⊂ U and B ⊂ V such that
the complement Y of U ∪ V (that is, everything in X
that does not belong to either U or V ) has dimension
at most d − 1. The set Y is the barrier—the main differ-
ence is that we have now asked for it to be closed. The
induction starts with the empty set, which has dimen-
sion −1. Brouwer’s definition is known as the inductive
dimension of a set.
Here is another basic idea that leads to a useful def-
inition of dimension, proposed by lebesgue [VI.72].
Suppose you want to cover an open interval of real
numbers (that is, an interval that does not contain its
endpoints) with shorter open intervals. Then you will be
forced to make the shorter ones overlap, but you can
do it in such a way that no point is contained in more
than two of your intervals: just start each new interval
close to the end of the previous one.
Now suppose that you want to cover an open square
(that is, one that does not contain its boundary) with
smaller open squares. Again you will be forced to make
the smaller squares overlap, but this time the situation
is slightly worse: some points will have to be contained
in three squares. However, if you take squares arranged
like bricks, as in figure 1, and expand them slightly,
then you can do the covering in such a way that no
four squares overlap. In general, it seems that to cover
a typical d-dimensional set with small open sets, you
need to have overlaps of d + 1 sets but you do not need
to have overlaps greater than this.
The precise definition that this leads to is surpris-
ingly general: it makes sense not just for subsets of Rn
but even for an arbitrary topological space [III.90].
We say that a set X is at most d dimensional if, how-
ever you cover X with a finite collection of open sets
III.
U1 , . . . , Un , you can find a finite collection of open sets
V1 , . . . , Vm with the following properties:
(i) the sets Vi also cover the whole of X;
(ii) every Vi is a subset of at least one Ui ;
(iii) no point is contained in more than d + 1 of the Vi .
If X is a metric space, then we can choose our Ui to have
small diameter, thereby forcing the Vi to be small. So
this definition is basically saying that it is possible to
cover X with open sets with no d + 2 of them overlap-
ping, and that these open sets can be as small as you
like.
We then define the topological dimension of X to
be the smallest d such that X is at most d dimen-
sional. And again it can be shown that this definition
assigns the “correct” dimension to the familiar shapes
of elementary geometry.
A fourth intuitive idea leads to concepts known as
homological and cohomological dimension. Associated
with any suitable topological space X, such as a man-
ifold, are sequences of groups known as homology
and cohomology groups [IV.6 §4]. Here we will dis-
cuss homology groups, but a very similar discussion
is possible for cohomology. Roughly speaking, the nth
homology group tells you how many interestingly dif-
ferent continuous maps there are from closed n-dimen-
sional manifolds M to X. If X is a manifold of dimension
less than n, then it can be shown that the nth homology
group is trivial: in a sense, there is not enough room in
X to define any map that is interestingly different from
a constant map. On the other hand, the nth homology
group of the n-sphere itself is Z, which says that one
can classify the maps from the n-sphere to itself by
means of an integer parameter.
It is therefore tempting to say that a space is at least
n dimensional if there is room inside it for interest-
ing maps from n-dimensional manifolds. This thought
leads to a whole class of definitions. The homological
dimension of a structure X is defined to be the largest
n for which some substructure of X has a nontrivial
nth homology group. (It is necessary to consider sub-
structures, because homology groups can also be trivial
when there is too much room: it then becomes easy to
deform a continuous map and show that it is equiva-
lent to a constant map.) However, homology is a very
general concept and there are many different homology
theories, so there are many different notions of homo-
logical dimension. Some of these are geometric, but
there are also homology theories for algebraic struc-
tures: for example, using suitable theories, one can
III.17. Dimension
define the homological dimension of algebraic struc-
tures such as rings [III.81 §1] or groups [I.3 §2.1]. This
is a very good example of geometrical ideas having an
algebraic payoff.
Now let us turn to a fifth and final (for this article at
least) intuitive idea about dimension, namely the way it
affects how we measure size. If you want to convey how
big a shape X is, then a good way of doing so is to give
the length of X if X is one dimensional, the area if it is
two dimensional, and the volume if it is three dimen-
sional. Of course, this presupposes that you already
know what the dimension is, but, as we shall see, there
is a way of deciding which measure is the most appro-
priate without determining the dimension in advance.
Then the tables are turned: we can actually define the
dimension to be the number that corresponds to the
best measure.
To do this, we use the fact that length, area, and vol-
ume scale in different ways when you expand a shape.
If you take a curve and expand it by a factor of 2 (in all
directions), then its length doubles. More generally, if
you expand by a factor of C, then the length multiplies
by C. However, if you take a two-dimensional shape and
expand it by C, then its area multiplies by C 2 . (Roughly
speaking, this is because each little portion of the shape
expands by C “in two directions” so you have to mul-
tiply the area by C twice.) And the volume of a three-
dimensional shape multiplies by C 3 : for instance, the
volume of a sphere of radius 3 is twenty-seven times
the volume of a sphere of radius 1.
It may look as though we still have to decide in
advance whether we will talk about length, area, or vol-
ume before we can even begin to think about how the
measurement scales when we expand the shape. But
this is not the case. For instance, if we expand a square
by a factor of 2, then we obtain a new square that can
be divided up into four congruent copies of the original
square. So, without having decided in advance that we
are talking about area, we can say that the size of the
new square is four times that of the old square.
This observation has a remarkable consequence:
there are sets to which it is natural to assign a dimen-
sion that is not an integer! Perhaps the simplest exam-
ple is a famous set first defined by cantor [VI.54] and
now known as the Cantor set. This set is produced as
follows. You start with the closed interval [0, 1], and
call it X0 . Then you form a set X1 by removing the mid-
dle third of X0 : that is, you remove all points between
1 2 1 2
3 and 3 , but leave 3 and 3 themselves. So X1 is the
1 2
union of the closed intervals [0, 3 ] and [ 3 , 1]. Next, you
183
remove the middle thirds of these two closed intervals
to produce a set X2 , so X2 is the union of the intervals
1 2 1 2 7 8
[0, 9 ], [ 9 , 3 ], [ 3 , 9 ], and [ 9 , 1].
In general, Xn is a union of closed intervals, and Xn+1
is what you get by removing the middle thirds of each
of these intervals—so Xn+1 consists of twice as many
intervals as Xn , but they are a third of the size. Once you
have produced the sequence X0 , X1 , X2 , . . . , you define
the Cantor set to be the intersection of all the Xi : that
is, all the real numbers that remain, no matter how
far you go with the process of removing middle thirds
of intervals. It is not hard to show that these are pre-
cisely the numbers whose ternary expansions consist
just of 0s and 2s. (There are some numbers that have
two different ternary expansions. For instance, 13 can
be written either as 0.1 or as 0.02222 . . . . In such cases
we take the recurring expansion rather than the ter-
minating one. So 13 belongs to the Cantor set.) Indeed,
when you remove middle thirds for the nth time, you
are removing all numbers that have a 1 in the nth place
after the “decimal” (in fact, ternary) point.
The Cantor set has many interesting properties. For
example, it is uncountable [III.11], but it also has mea-
sure [III.55] zero. Briefly, the first of these assertions
follows from the fact that there is a different element
of the Cantor set for every subset A of the natural num-
bers (just take the ternary number 0.a1 a2 a3 . . . , where
ai = 2 whenever i ∈ A and ai = 0 otherwise), and there
are uncountably many subsets of the natural numbers.
To justify the second, note that the total length of the
intervals making up Xn is ( 23 )n (since one removes a
third of Xn−1 to produce Xn ). Since the Cantor set is
contained in every Xn , its measure must be smaller
than ( 23 )n , whatever n is, which means that it must be
zero. Thus, the Cantor set is very large in one respect
and very small in another.
A further property of the Cantor set is that it is self-
similar. The set X1 consists of two intervals, and if you
look at just one of these intervals as the middle thirds
are repeatedly removed, then what you see is just like
the construction of the whole Cantor set, but scaled
down by a factor of 3. That is, the Cantor set consists
of two copies of itself, each scaled down by a factor
of 3. From this we deduce the following statement: if
you expand the Cantor set by a factor of 3, then you can
divide the expanded set up into two congruent copies
of the original, so it is “twice as big.”
What consequence should this have for the dimen-
sion of the Cantor set? Well, if the dimension is d, then