English

Real numbers equally compressible in every base

Information Theory 2022-09-30 v2 math.IT

Abstract

This work solves an open question in finite-state compressibility posed by Lutz and Mayordomo about compressibility of real numbers in different bases. Finite-state compressibility, or equivalently, finite-state dimension, quantifies the asymptotic lower density of information in an infinite sequence. Absolutely normal numbers, being finite-state incompressible in every base of expansion, are precisely those numbers which have finite-state dimension equal to 11 in every base. At the other extreme, for example, every rational number has finite-state dimension equal to 00 in every base. Generalizing this, Lutz and Mayordomo (2021) posed the question: are there numbers which have absolute positive finite-state dimension strictly between 0 and 1 - equivalently, is there a real number ξ\xi and a compressibility ratio s(0,1)s \in (0,1) such that for every base bb, the compressibility ratio of the base-bb expansion of ξ\xi is precisely ss? It is conceivable that there is no such number. Indeed, some works explore ``zero-one'' laws for other feasible dimensions - i.e. sequences with certain properties either have feasible dimension 0 or 1, taking no value strictly in between. However, we answer the question of Lutz and Mayordomo affirmatively by proving a more general result. We show that given any sequence of rational numbers qb\langle q_b \rangle, we can explicitly construct a single number ξ\xi such that for any base bb, the finite-state dimension/compression ratio of ξ\xi in base-bb is qbq_b. As a special case, this result implies the existence of absolutely dimensioned numbers for any given rational dimension between 00 and 11, as posed by Lutz and Mayordomo. In our construction, we combine ideas from Wolfgang Schmidt's construction of absolutely normal numbers (1962), results regarding low discrepancy sequences and several new estimates related to exponential sums.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.06340,
  title  = {Real numbers equally compressible in every base},
  author = {Satyadev Nandakumar and Subin Pulari},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.06340},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Article was restructured. Table of contents and table of notations and terminology were added

R2 v1 2026-06-25T01:40:10.927Z