The End 2016 Mathematics A To Z: Image

It’s another free-choice entry. I’ve got something that I can use to make my Friday easier.

Image.

So remember a while back I talked about what functions are? I described them the way modern mathematicians like. A function’s got three components to it. One is a set of things called the domain. Another is a set of things called the range. And there’s some rule linking things in the domain to things in the range. In shorthand we’ll write something like “f(x) = y”, where we know that x is in the domain and y is in the range. In a slightly more advanced mathematics class we’ll write . That maybe looks a little more computer-y. But I bet you can read that already: “f matches x to y”. Or maybe “f maps x to y”.

We have a couple ways to think about what ‘y’ is here. One is to say that ‘y’ is the image of ‘x’, under ‘f’. The language evokes camera trickery, or at least the way a trick lens might make us see something different. Pretend that the domain is something you could gaze at. If the domain is, say, some part of the real line, or a two-dimensional plane, or the like that’s not too hard to do. Then we can think of the rule part of ‘f’ as some distorting filter. When we look to where ‘x’ would be, we see the thing in the range we know as ‘y’.

At this point you probably imagine this is a pointless word to have. And that it’s backed up by a useless analogy. So it is. As far as I’ve gone this addresses a problem we don’t need to solve. If we want “the thing f matches x to” we can just say “f(x)”. Well, we write “f(x)”. We say “f of x”. Maybe “f at x”, or “f evaluated at x” if we want to emphasize ‘f’ more than ‘x’ or ‘f(x)’.

Where it gets useful is that we start looking at subsets. Bunches of points, not just one. Call ‘D’ some interesting-looking subset of the domain. What would it mean if we wrote the expression ‘f(D)’? Could we make that meaningful?

We do mean something by it. We mean what you might imagine by it. If you haven’t thought about what ‘f(D)’ might mean, take a moment — a short moment — and guess what it might. Don’t overthink it and you’ll have it right. I’ll put the answer just after this little bit so you can ponder.

Our pet rabbit on the beach in Omena, Michigan back in July this year. Which is a small town on the Traverse Bay, which is just off Lake Michigan where … oh, you have Google Maps, you don’t need me. Anyway we wondered what he would make of vast expanses of water, considering he doesn’t like water what with being a rabbit and all that. And he watched it for a while and then shuffled his way in to where the waves come up and could wash over his front legs, making us wonder what kind of crazy rabbit he is, exactly.

So. ‘f(D)’ is a set. We make that set by taking, in turn, every single thing that’s in ‘D’. And find everything in the range that’s matched by ‘f’ to those things in ‘D’. Collect them all together. This set, ‘f(D)’, is “the image of D under f”.

We use images a lot when we’re studying how functions work. A function that maps a simple lump into a simple lump of about the same size is one thing. A function that maps a simple lump into a cloud of disparate particles is a very different thing. A function that describes how physical systems evolve will preserve the volume and some other properties of these lumps of space. But it might stretch out and twist around that space, which is how we discovered chaos.

Properly speaking, the range of a function ‘f’ is just the image of the whole domain under that ‘f’. But we’re not usually that careful about defining ranges. We’ll say something like ‘the domain and range are the sets of real numbers’ even though we only need the positive real numbers in the range. Well, it’s not like we’re paying for unnecessary range. Let me call the whole domain ‘X’, because I went and used ‘D’ earlier. Then the range, let me call that ‘Y’, would be ‘Y = f(X)’.

Images will turn up again. They’re a handy way to let us get at some useful ideas.

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