English

Taking rational numbers at random

Probability 2019-08-20 v1

Abstract

We outline some simple prescriptions to define a distribution on the set Q0\mathbb{Q}_0 of all the rational numbers in [0,1][0,1], and we then explore both a few properties of these distributions, and the possibility of making these rational numbers asymptotically equiprobable in a suitable sense. In particular it will be shown that in the said limit -- albeit no uniform distribution can be properly defined on Q0\mathbb{Q}_0 -- the probability allotted to a single qQ0q\in\mathbb{Q}_0 asymptotically vanishes, while that of the subset of Q0\mathbb{Q}_0 falling in an interval [a,b][a,b] goes to bab-a. We finally give some hints to completely sequencing without repetitions the numbers in Q0\mathbb{Q}_0 as a prerequisite to the laying down of more distributions on it

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.06944,
  title  = {Taking rational numbers at random},
  author = {Nicola Cufaro Petroni},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.06944},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

18 pages, 3 figures