Ternary Expansions and the Cantor Set

Geometric Series: Recall a geometric series, which converges for all |a| < 1:
X
∞
1
ak =
k=0
1−a

This is a result of the telescoping formula

(1 − a)(1 + a + a2 + · · · + aN −1 ) = 1 − aN

When |a| < 1, taking the limit as N goes to infinity gives the geometric series formula.
1
We consider the special case where a = for p a natural number greater than or equal to 2.
p
When p = 2 we just have the familiar series:
1 1 1
1+ + + +··· = 2
2 4 8
This series also has the cool property that every tail of the series sums to exactly the previous
term before the tail:
1 1 1
1 = + + +···
2 4 8
1 1 1 1
= + + +···
2 4 8 16
1 1 1 1
= + + ···
2N 2N +1 2N +2 2N +3

This property is not unique, however. Let a = 1p . Prove that

X∞
p−1 1
k
= N (1)
k=N +1
p p

for any p ∈ N, p ≥ 2.
X
∞
p−1
Note that, in particular, = 1, regardless of the choice of p.
k=1
pk

Expansions of real numbers

Given p ≥ 2, take any series of the form

Prove that this series converges to a real number in [0, 1].

X
∞
ak
F : {ak }∞
k=1 7→ (2)
k=1
pk

is therefore a well-defined map from the space of such sequences to [0, 1]. We observe that F is
not quite injective. If x ∈ [0, 1] is of the form pqN where q ∈ N, q < P N , show that there are two
different sequences {ak }∞k=1 that F maps to x.

Next, we want to prove that F is surjective. Given any x ∈ [0, 1], prove (constructively) that
there exists a sequence {ak }∞
k=1 such that ak ∈ {0, 1, . . . , p − 1} for all k and

X
∞
ak
= x.
k=1
pk

Hint: observe that since the series consists of positive terms, the partial sums form a strictly
increasing sequence. Also, use Equation (1) above.
You can now describe a bijection between the interval [0, 1] and the space of sequences
{ak }∞
k=1 , ak ∈ {0, 1, . . . , p − 1}. When p = 10, the sequence is just exactly the decimal expansion
of the number x, for example,
1 4 1
x = 0.141592... = + 2 + 3 +··· ;
10 10 10
when p = 2 the sequence is called the binary expansion; when p = 3, it is the ternary expansion.
The Cantor Set
One way to view the Cantor ternary set is in terms of ternary expansions. Given x ∈ [0, 1],
there is a sequence of integers {ak }∞
k=1 , ak ∈ {0, 1, 2} such that the series

X
∞
ak
3k
k=1

converges to x. In other words, we can associate x to the ternary sequence

Prove that the Cantor ternary set is equal to the subset of [0, 1] consisting of all x which have
a ternary expansion for which ak ∈ {0, 2} for all k, i.e. the numbers which have an expansion
with no 1’s. (Read this carefully in the cases where x has two possible expansions. If x has one
ternary expansion which contains no 1’s, then it is in the Cantor set.)
Prove that the map we defined in class:
X
∞
ak X∞
bk ak
k
7→ bk =
k=1
3 k=1
2k 2

maps the Cantor ternary set C onto [0, 1], hence proving C is uncountable.
Prove that if a, b ∈ C, the Cantor ternary set, with a < b, then there exists a real number
r∈
/ C such that a < r < b. In other words, the Cantor set contains no intervals.