Talk:Outer measure

message: It turns out the second and third requirements together for all sets are incompatible conditions
:I'm not sure this is true. Counting measure is a counterexample. I think if you include the first requirement as well (which should imply translation invariance) then the measure cannot be defined for all subsets. Also, is outer measure something which can be defined on (the power set of) any set?, or just Euclidean spaces? Revolver 17:17, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Counting measure is a counterexample + it is translation invariant, but, of course, it does not measure length, area, volume, et. c. -- Leocat 18:36, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: Let's see the sentence "Let X be a set, C a family of subsets of X which contains the empty set and p an extended real valued function on C which vanishes on the empty set" in the first of the section "Construction of outer measures". It seems that the words "p an extended real valued function" should be read as "p an extended nonnegative real valued function".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ptnam373 (talk • contribs) 20:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Right. — Emil J. 16:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A mistake? 

message: I think that really all 4 conditions are needed in the "motiviation" section.  The zero function satisfies everything except the first condition, and if there is a real-valued measurable cardinal then Lebesgue measure can be extended to a total measure. --Aleph4 (talk) 15:53, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  translation invariance 

message: I noticed that there is probably some redundancy in the definition. I suspect that one can replace the three requirements by the following:
* Countable subadditivity: Whenever {Uj} is a countable collection of sets such that 
::  A \subset \bigcup_j U_j, 
then
::  \varphi(A) \leq \sum_j \varphi(U_j).
This definition is more economical, and has the advantage that it can be sourced to an excellent reference, namely Geometric Measure Theory by Herbert Federer. Economy in definitions is probably appropriate when it comes to "lowlevel mathematics". (This definition is obtained through a slight generalization of Caratheodory's original definition; Federer omits Caratheodory's requirement of additivity for disjoint sets.) YohanN7 (talk) 15:34, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition 

message: In the section "Measurability of sets relative to an outer measure", the article first gives the definition of measurability:
: One says that a subset E of X is \mu-measurable (sometimes called Carathéodory-measurable relative to \mu, after the mathematician Carathéodory) if and only if
\mu(A) = \mu(A \cap E) + \mu(A \setminus E)
: for every subset A of X.
It then says:
: One might then expect that every subset of the plane would be deemed "measurable," following the expected principle that
\operatorname{area}(A \cup B) = \operatorname{area}(A) + \operatorname{area}(B)
: whenever A and B are disjoint subsets of the plane.
I am having trouble seeing how these two formulas relate to one another. Does the second one imply the first somehow? If so it would be great to include a more precise statement and a proof, since this seems like it would give a really nice intuitive motivation for the definition.
(Maybe something along the lines of "if \mu(A) + \mu(B) = \mu(A\cup B) for all disjoint A and B, then all sets are \mu-measurable"? Or even "A is \mu-measurable if and only if for every B disjoint from A we have \mu(A) + \mu(B) = \mu(A\cup B)"? But I don't immediately see why either of these would be true.)
In its present form I think this claim is just confusing, as it implies some kind of relationship between the area rule and Carathéodory-measurability but doesn't really explain what it is.
Nathaniel Virgo (talk) 08:13, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing claim about area