How Many Monotonically Increasing Sequences of Natural Numbers?

elementary-set-theory

Could you please offer a straightforward idea to demonstrate that the set of monotonically increasing sequences of natural numbers is indeed uncountable?

I was asked to show the cardinality of this set but the best I can do right now is the following

  1. Monotonically increasing sequences are equivalent to infinite subsets (trivial).
  2. Number of finite subsets is countable (by mapping to rational numbers within $[0;1]$ like $\{4,5,6\} \rightarrow 1/2^4+1/2^5+1/2^6$).
  3. Number of all subsets is uncountable (by similarly mapping to all numbers within $[0;1]$).
  4. Hence the number of infinite subsets is uncountable.

However working with a couple of proofs seems cumbersome and is hopefully redundant for the original task.

Best Answer

If $\sigma=\langle n_k:k\in\Bbb N\rangle$ is monotonically non-decreasing, let $\hat\sigma=\langle n_{k+1}-n_k:k\in\Bbb N\rangle$; then $\hat\sigma$ is an arbitrary sequence in $\Bbb N$. (My $\Bbb N$ includes $0$.) (If you meant $\sigma$ to be strictly increasing, replace $n_{k+1}-n_k$ by $n_{k+1}-n_k-1$.) The map $\sigma\mapsto\hat\sigma$ is a bijection between the set of monotonically non-decreasing sequences in $\Bbb N$ and the set of all sequences in $\Bbb N$. If you know that the latter set is uncountable, you’re done. If not, observe that it contains the set of sequences of zeroes and ones, which are just the indicator (or characteristic) functions of subsets of $\Bbb N$, so there are uncountably many of them.