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In mathematics, the real numbers may be described informally in several different ways. The real numbers include both rational numbers, such as 42 and −23/129, and irrational numbers, such as pi and the square root of 2; a real number can be given by an infinite decimal representation, such as 2.4871773339…, where the digits continue in some way; the real numbers may be thought of as points on an infinitely long number line.

These descriptions of the real numbers, while intuitively accessible, are not sufficiently rigorous for the purposes of pure mathematics. The discovery of a suitably rigorous definition of the real numbers — indeed, the realisation that a better definition was needed — was one of the most important developments of 19th century mathematics. Popular definitions in use today include equivalence classes of Cauchy sequences of rational numbers; Dedekind cuts; a more sophisticated version of "decimal representation"; and an axiomatic definition of the real numbers as the unique complete Archimedean ordered field. These definitions are all described in detail below.

The term "real number" is a retronym coined in response to "imaginary number".

Basic properties

A real number may be either rational or irrational; either algebraic or transcendental; and either positive, negative, or zero.

Real numbers measure continuous quantities. They may in theory be expressed by decimal representations that have an infinite sequence of digits to the right of the decimal point; these are often represented in the same form as 324.823211247…. The three dots indicate that there would still be more digits to come.

More formally, real numbers have the two basic properties of being an ordered field, and having the least upper bound property. The first says that real numbers comprise a field, with addition and multiplication as well as division by nonzero numbers, which can be totally ordered on a number line in a way compatible with addition and multiplication. The second says that if a nonempty set of real numbers has an upper bound, then it has a least upper bound. These two together define the real numbers completely, and allow its other properties to be deduced. For instance, we can prove from these properties that every polynomial of odd degree with real coefficients has a real root, and that if you add the square root of minus one to the real numbers, obtaining the complex numbers, the result is algebraically closed.

Uses

Measurements in the physical sciences are almost always conceived of as approximations to real numbers. While the numbers used for this purpose are generally decimal fractions representing rational numbers, writing them in decimal terms suggests they are an approximation to a theoretical underlying real number.

A real number is said to be computable if there exists an algorithm that yields its digits. Because there are only countably many algorithms, but an uncountable number of reals, most real numbers are not computable. Some constructivists accept the existence of only those reals that are computable. The set of definable numbers is broader, but still only countable.

Computers can only approximate most real numbers. Most commonly, they can represent a certain subset of the rationals exactly, via either floating point numbers or fixed-point numbers, and these rationals are used as an approximation for other nearby real values. Arbitrary-precision arithmetic is a method to represent arbitrary rational numbers, limited only by available memory, but more commonly one uses a fixed number of bits of precision determined by the size of the processor registers. In addition to these rational values, computer algebra systems are able to treat many (countable) irrational numbers exactly by storing an algebraic description (such as "sqrt(2)") rather than their rational approximation.

Mathematicians use the symbol R (or alternatively, ${\mathbb {R}}$ , the letter "R" in blackboard bold) to represent the set of all real numbers. The notation Rⁿ refers to an n-dimensional space of real numbers; for example, a value from R³ consists of three real numbers and specifies a location in 3-dimensional space.

In mathematics, real is used as an adjective, meaning that the underlying field is the field of real numbers. For example real matrix, real polynomial and real Lie algebra.

History

Vulgar fractions had been used by the Egyptians around 1000 BC; the Vedic "Sulba Sutras" ("rule of chords" in Sanskrit), ca. 600 BC, contain the first use of irrational numbers, and approximation of π at 3.16.

Around 500 BC, the Greek mathematicians led by Pythagoras realized the need for irrational numbers in particular the irrationality of the square root of two. Negative numbers were conceived by Indian mathematicians around 600 AD, and then possibly conceived independently in China shortly after. They were not used in Europe until the 1600s, but even in the late 1700s, Leonhard Euler discarded negative solutions to equations as unrealistic.

In the 18th and 19th centuries there was much work on irrational and transcendental numbers. Lambert (1761) gave the first flawed proof that π cannot be rational, Legendre (1794) completed the proof, and showed that π is not the square root of a rational number. Ruffini (1799) and Abel (1842) both construct proofs of Abel–Ruffini theorem: that the general quintic or higher equations cannot be solved by a general formula involving only arithmetical operations and roots.

Évariste Galois (1832) developed techniques for determining whether a given equation could be solved by radicals which gave rise to the field of Galois theory. Joseph Liouville (1840) showed that neither e nor e² can be a root of an integer quadratic equation, and then established existence of transcendental numbers, the proof being subsequently displaced by Georg Cantor (1873). Charles Hermite (1873) first proved that e is transcendental, and Ferdinand von Lindemann (1882), showed that π is transcendental. Lindemann's proof was much simplified by Weierstrass (1885), still further by David Hilbert (1893), and has finally been made elementary by Hurwitz and Paul Albert Gordan.

The development of calculus in the 1700s used the entire set of real numbers without having defined them cleanly. The first rigorous definition was given by Georg Cantor in 1871. In 1874 he showed that the set of all real numbers is uncountably infinite but the set of all algebraic numbers is countably infinite. Contrary to widely held beliefs, his method was not his famous diagonal argument, which he published in 1891.

Definition

Construction from the rational numbers

The real numbers can be constructed as a completion of the rational numbers in such a way that a sequence defined by a decimal or binary expansion like {3, 3.1, 3.14, 3.141, 3.1415,…} converges to a unique real number. For details and other constructions of real numbers, see construction of real numbers.

Axiomatic approach

Let R denote the set of all real numbers. Then:

The set R is a field, meaning that addition and multiplication are defined and have the usual properties.
The field R is ordered, meaning that there is a total order ≥ such that, for all real numbers x, y and z:
- if x ≥ y then x + z ≥ y + z;
- if x ≥ 0 and y ≥ 0 then xy ≥ 0.
The order is Dedekind-complete, i.e., every non-empty subset S of R with an upper bound in R has a least upper bound (also called supremum) in R.

The last property is what differentiates the reals from the rationals. For example, the set of rationals with square less than 2 has a rational upper bound (e.g., 1.5) but no rational least upper bound, because the square root of 2 is not rational.

The real numbers are uniquely specified by the above properties. More precisely, given any two Dedekind complete ordered fields R₁ and R₂, there exists a unique field isomorphism from R₁ to R₂, allowing us to think of them as essentially the same mathematical object.

For another axiomatization of R, see Tarski's axiomatization of the reals.

Properties

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"The complete ordered field"

The real numbers are often described as "the complete ordered field", a phrase that can be interpreted in several ways.

First, an order can be lattice-complete. It is easy to see that no ordered field can be lattice-complete, because it can have no largest element (given any element z, z + 1 is larger), so this is not the sense that is meant.

Additionally, an order can be Dedekind-complete, as defined in the section Axioms. The uniqueness result at the end of that section justifies using the word "the" in the phrase "complete ordered field" when this is the sense of "complete" that is meant. This sense of completeness is most closely related to the construction of the reals from Dedekind cuts, since that construction starts from an ordered field (the rationals) and then forms the Dedekind-completion of it in a standard way.

These two notions of completeness ignore the field structure. However, an ordered group (in this case, the additive group of the field) defines a uniform structure, and uniform structures have a notion of completeness (topology); the description in the section Completeness above is a special case. (We refer to the notion of completeness in uniform spaces rather than the related and better known notion for metric spaces, since the definition of metric space relies on already having a characterisation of the real numbers.) It is not true that R is the only uniformly complete ordered field, but it is the only uniformly complete Archimedean field, and indeed one often hears the phrase "complete Archimedean field" instead of "complete ordered field". Since it can be proved that any uniformly complete Archimedean field must also be Dedekind complete (and vice versa, of course), this justifies using "the" in the phrase "the complete Archimedean field". This sense of completeness is most closely related to the construction of the reals from Cauchy sequences (the construction carried out in full in this article), since it starts with an Archimedean field (the rationals) and forms the uniform completion of it in a standard way.

But the original use of the phrase "complete Archimedean field" was by David Hilbert, who meant still something else by it. He meant that the real numbers form the largest Archimedean field in the sense that every other Archimedean field is a subfield of R. Thus R is "complete" in the sense that nothing further can be added to it without making it no longer an Archimedean field. This sense of completeness is most closely related to the construction of the reals from surreal numbers, since that construction starts with a proper class that contains every ordered field (the surreals) and then selects from it the largest Archimedean subfield.

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Generalizations and extensions

The real numbers can be generalized and extended in several different directions. Perhaps the most natural extension are the complex numbers which contain solutions to all polynomial equations and hence are an algebraically closed field unlike the real numbers. However, the complex numbers are not an ordered field. Ordered fields extending the reals are the hyperreal numbers and the surreal numbers; both of them contain infinitesimal and infinitely large numbers and thus are not Archimedean. Occasionally, the two formal elements +∞ and −∞ are added to the reals to form the extended real number line, a compact space which is not a field but retains many of the properties of the real numbers. Self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space (for example, self-adjoint square complex matrices) generalize the reals in many respects: they can be ordered (though not totally ordered), they are complete, all their eigenvalues are real and they form a real associative algebra. Positive-definite operators correspond to the positive reals and normal operators correspond to the complex numbers.

References

Georg Cantor, 1874, "Über eine Eigenschaft des Inbegriffes aller reelen algebraischen Zahlen", Journal für die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik, volume 77, pages 258-262.

External links

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 But the original use of the phrase "complete Archimedean field" was by [[David Hilbert]], who meant still something else by it. He meant that the real numbers form the ''largest'' Archimedean field in the sense that every other Archimedean field is a subfield of '''R'''. Thus '''R''' is "complete" in the sense that nothing further can be added to it without making it no longer an Archimedean field. This sense of completeness is most closely related to the construction of the reals from [[surreal number]]s, since that construction starts with a proper class that contains every ordered field (the surreals) and then selects from it the largest Archimedean subfield.
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-===Advanced properties===
-The reals are [[uncountable]]; that is, there are strictly more real numbers than [[natural number]]s, even though both sets are [[infinity|infinite]]. This is proved with [[Cantor's diagonal argument]]. In fact, the [[cardinality of the continuum|cardinality of the reals]] is 2<sup>&omega;</sup>, i.e., the cardinality of the set of subsets of the [[natural number]]s. Since only a countable set of real numbers can be [[algebraic number|algebraic]], [[almost all]] real numbers are [[transcendental number|transcendental]]. The non-existence of a subset of the reals with cardinality strictly between that of the integers and the reals is known as the [[continuum hypothesis]]. The continuum hypothesis can neither be proved nor be disproved; it is [[logical independence|independent]] from the [[axiomatic set theory|axioms of set theory]].
-The real numbers form a [[metric space]]: the distance between ''x'' and ''y'' is defined to be the [[absolute value]] |''x''&nbsp;&minus;&nbsp;''y''|. By virtue of being a [[total order|totally ordered]] set, they also carry an [[order topology]]; the [[topology]] arising from the metric and the one arising from the order are identical. The reals are a [[contractible]] (hence [[connected space|connected]] and [[simply connected]]), [[separable]] metric space of [[dimension]] 1, and are [[first category|everywhere dense]]. The real numbers are [[local compactness|locally compact]] but not [[compact space|compact]]. There are various properties that uniquely specify them; for instance, all unbounded, connected, and separable [[total order|order topologies]] are necessarily [[homeomorphic]] to the reals.
-Every nonnegative real number has a [[square root]] in '''R''', and no negative number does. This shows that the order on '''R''' is determined by its algebraic structure. Also, every polynomial of odd degree admits at least one root: these two properties make '''R''' the premier example of a [[real closed field]]. Proving this is the first half of one proof of the [[fundamental theorem of algebra]].
-The reals carry a canonical [[Measure (mathematics)|measure]], the [[Lebesgue measure]], which is the [[Haar measure]] on their structure as a [[topological group]] normalised such that the [[unit interval]] [0,1] has measure 1.
-The supremum axiom of the reals refers to subsets of the reals and is therefore a second-order logical statement. It is not possible to characterize the reals with [[first-order logic]] alone: the [[Löwenheim-Skolem theorem]] implies that there exists a countable dense subset of the real numbers satisfying exactly the same sentences in first order logic as the real numbers themselves. The set of [[hyperreal number]]s <!--is equal in cardinality to '''R''' and also--> satisfies the same first order sentences as '''R'''. Ordered fields that satisfy the same first-order sentences as '''R''' are called [[nonstandard model]]s of '''R'''. This is what makes [[nonstandard analysis]] work; by proving a first-order statement in some nonstandard model (which may be easier than proving it in '''R'''), we know that the same statement must also be true of '''R'''.
 ==Generalizations and extensions==