Cantor Sets and Fractal

Dimensions
 Construction of the Cantor Set
 Similarity Dimension of Fractals
 The Devil's Staircase
 Cantor Set
 The Cantor Set is defined iteratively
 We start with C0 the closed interval [0,1]
 To get C1 we remove the open middle third of the
interval, to obtain the union of intervals [0,1/3] and
[2/3,1]
 To get C2 we remove the open middle thirds of the
intervals of C1 to obtain the union of intervals [0,1/9],
[2/9,1/3],[2/3,7/9], and [8/9,1]
 We continue removing the middle thirds in this
fashion to get the limiting set C∞ which we call the
Cantor set
Graphs of the First Few Cantor
Iterations
0 1 C0

0 1/3 2/3 1 C1

0 1/9 2/9 1/3 2/3 7/9 8/9 1 C2

0 1/27 2/27 1/9 2/9 7/27 8/27 1/3 2/3 19/27 20/27 7/9 8/9 25/27 26/27 1 C3

C4

C5
Ternary Representation of Cantor Set
 Expanding a number in [0,1] into base 3 has a nice geometric
representation.
 Say x=(0.x1x2x3...)3 , then the first digit x1 tells us which third of the interval x
is in. If x1=0 then x is in the left third, x1=1 then x is in the middle third, x1=2
then x is in the right third.
 The second digit x2 tells us which third x is in with respect to the first digit. So
if x=0.02... then it is in the right part of the left third.
 Now we can define the Cantor Set to be all numbers in [0,1] whose base 3
expansion only contains zeroes and twos.
0.0... 0.1... 0.2...

0.00... 0.01... 0.02... 0.20... 0.21... 0.22...

 Properties of the Cantor Set

 C∞ has structure at arbitrarily small scales.

 C∞ is made of scaled copies of it self, we call it self similar


C∞ is uncountable.
 This is easily proved by an argument similar to the proof for
uncountability of the Real Numbers
 C∞ has total length 0.
 Notice C0 has length 1, C2 has length 2/3, Cn has length (2/3)n so as n→∞ the
length of Cn → 0

 C∞ is totally disconnected, that is it contains no intervals. However, it

contains no isolated points, ie. for every point in the Cantor Set, we can find
another arbitrarily close.
 The dimension of C∞ is not an integer
 Self Similarity Dimension

 So how do we determine the dimension of a self similar

set?
 Well consider a square. If we scale the square down by a
factor of r, then it will take r2 of the smaller squares to
cover the original square.
 Similarly for a cube that is scaled down by a factor of r, it
will take r3 of the smaller cubes to reconstruct the original.
 So suppose we have some self similar set, which when
scaled by a factor of r, takes m copies make up the
original. Then we define the similarity dimension d, to be
the exponent of the relationship m=rd
 Solving for d, we get d=ln(m)/ln(r)
 Similarity Dimension of the
Cantor Set
 Looking back at our graphs of the Cantor Set,
we see that each iterate is composed of two
copies of the previous iterate scaled by a factor
of 3.
 So the similarity dimension of the Cantor Set is
d=ln(2)/ln(3)=.63093
Cantor Function (Devil's Staircase)
Problem 11.2.6

 Suppose we pick a point at random from the

Cantor set. What is the probability that this
point lies to the left of x, where 0≤x≤1 is some
fixed number?
 The answer is given by a function P(x) called
the devil's staircase.
 Right away we should make note that since
P(x) is a probability we know that P(0)=0 and
P(1)=1.
 Let us start by building up P(x) from our iterates
of the Cantor Set.
 11.2.6

 Since C0 is the whole interval [0,1], we easily

see that if x is some fixed point in [0,1], then x
is in C0. So the probability that another point in
C0 lies to the left of x is just P0(x)=x
 P1(x) is slightly more interesting. If x is
anywhere in [1/3,2/3] we see that half of C 1 lies
to the left of [1/3,2/3]. So P 1(x)=1/2 for
1/3≤x≤2/3
 11.2.6

 P1(x) will be defined piecewise in 3 pieces.

0≤x≤1/3, 1/3≤x≤2/3, 2/3≤x≤1
 We already know P1(x) is constant on the
middle interval, and we have 2 boundary
conditions for each of the left and right
intervals. So let us linearly interpolate for both
of these intervals.
 11.2.6

 Assume P1(x)=ax+b for 0≤x≤1/3

 P1(0)=0, P1(1/3)=1/2
 We get the system of equations:
0=b
1/2=(1/3)*a
 So P1(x)=(3/2)x for 0≤x≤1/3
 11.2.6

 Now assume P1(x)=ax+b for 2/3≤x≤1

 P1(2/3)=1/2, P1(1)=1
 We get the system of equations:
1/2=(2/3)x+b
1=a+b
 Solving for a and b, we get a=3/2, b=-1/2
 So P1(x)=(3/2)x-1/2 for 2/3≤x≤1
 11.2.6

 We can use a similar process to find piecewise

functions for Pn(x)
 Here are some plots for n=0,1,2,3,4,5

P0(x) P1(x)
 11.2.6

P2(x) P3(x)
 11.2.6

P4(x) P5(x)
 11.2.6

 The limiting function P∞(x) is the devil's

staircase. Strangely enough P∞(x) can be
shown to be continuous.
 The derivative of P∞(x) will be zero, nearly
everywhere.