[Math] Measure theory – Lebesgue measure

lebesgue-measuremeasure-theoryreal-analysis

I have two problems that I would like some help with.

  1. Show that every countable subset of $\mathbb{R}$ has Lebesgue measure zero.

  2. For two arbitrary sets $A$ and $B$ show that
    $$\lvert m^*(A)-m^*(B)\rvert \leq m^*(A \triangle B)$$
    where $\triangle$ is the symmetric difference operator.

Best Answer

For the first question:

Let $A = \bigcup_{n \in \mathbb N} \{a_n \} \subset \mathbb R$. The Lebesgue measure of a point is zero: by construction of the Lebesgue measure, $\lambda [a,b] = b - a$. For the one element set $\{ a \} = [a,a]$ we have $\lambda [a,a] = a-a =0$.

Since the Lebesgue measure is additive, we have $$ \lambda A = \sum \lambda \{a_n\} = \sum 0 = 0$$