The Lebesgue Measure of the set of numbers in (0,1) that contain 100 consecutve 4’s

lebesgue-measuremeasure-theory

This comes from S.Axler's Measure Theory Graduate Textbook.

I am struggling with this problem and I really do not have any idea how to tackle it.

I know this is a Borel Set. I did it as the countable union of intervals $I_n$, where infomrally, $I_n = \cup_{A}[0.A444…44, 0.A444…45$) where $A$ is any $n$ digit numbe and $4$ is written 100 consecutive times. It should contain all the required numbers.

What I have noticed is that it is dense in the $(0,1)$ interval and it is an uncountable set (take any decimal expansion of a number in $(0,1)$ and add 100 consecutive 4's at the beggining of that decimal expansion). Using the proof of a Borel set to calculate the measure and adding the requirement that $A$ should not contain 4's gave me a lower bound: $10^{-99}$. My intuition is that the Lebesgue measure should turn out to be 1, but it may not be the case

Best Answer

Probability theory answer. The digits in the base $10$ expansion are i.i.d random variables with respect to Lebesgue measure.

Suppose I roll a 10-sided die repeatedly. What is the probability that I never get $100$ consecutive $4$'s? Of course that probability is zero by the Borel-Cantelli lemma. So (taking the complement) the set of decimals that contain $100$ consecutive $4$'s has measure $1$.


Requested, more complete explanation.

Divide into blocks of length $100$. Let $B_1$ be the first $100$ digits, let $B_2$ be the second $100$ digits and so on. Write $T_j$ for the event "Block $B_j$ consists of $100$ consecutive $4$'s". These events are independent since the blocks are disjoint. We claim

$$ \mathbb P\left(T_j\text{ occurs for infinitely many } j\right) = 1 . \tag 1$$

For any $j$ we have $\mathbb P(T_j) = 10^{-100}$. The exact value is not important, only that it is nonzero. It is the same for all $T_j$. The series $\sum_{j=1}^\infty \mathbb P(T_j)$ diverges to infinity. So by the Borel-Cantelli lemma, we get $(1)$.

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