Discontinuity and almost everywhere

real-analysis

I want to know the relationship between continuity and almost everywhere.

If a function f has only finitely many removable discontinuities, then there exists a continuous function $g$ such that $f = g$ a.e.

I know this is true.
Also we can change ‘finitely many’ into ‘countably many’.

But if f has a discontinuity which is not removable, is there a continuous function g such that $f = g$ a.e?

For example, suppose $X=[0,1]$ and $f$ is a function on $X$ whose value is $0$ on $[0,1/2]$ and $1$ on $(1/2,1]$.

In this case, is there a continuous function $g$ such that $f = g$ a.e.?

Thank you.

Best Answer

There is not. Suppose $g\colon X\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ is such a function. $f^{-1}(0)$ has positive measure and $f=g$ a.e., so $g^{-1}(0)$ has positive measure; similarly, $g^{-1}(1)$ has positive measure. In particular, $0,1\in g(X)$, so $[0,1]\subseteq g(X)$ by the IVT. Now, the intuition is that the "jump" from $0$ to $1$ that $f$ does is something that a continuous $g$ could only do on a set with positive measure. Indeed, $(0,1)$ is an open set, so $g^{-1}((0,1))$ is open by continuity of $g$, non-empty by the IVT and hence has positive measure. However $f(x)\neq g(x)$ for all $x\in g^{-1}((0,1))$, because $f(X)=\{0,1\}$. Hence such a $g$ does not exist. I leave it to you to generalize this to arbitrary jump discontinuities.

Related Question