Isolated Point

Isolated point
In mathematics, a point x is called an

isolated point of a subset S (in a
topological space X) if x is an element
of S and there exists a neighborhood of
x that does not contain any other points
of S. This is equivalent to saying that
the singleton {x} is an open set in the
topological space S (considered as a "0" is an isolated point of A = {0} ∪ [1, 2]
subspace of X). Another equivalent
formulation is: an element x of S is an
isolated point of S if and only if it is not a limit point of S.
If the space X is a metric space, for example a Euclidean space, then an element x of S is an isolated point
of S if there exists an open ball around x that contains only finitely many elements of S.
Contents
Related notions
Examples
Standard examples
Two counter-intuitive examples
See also
References
External links
Related notions
A set that is made up only of isolated points is called a discrete set (see also discrete space). Any discrete
subset S of Euclidean space must be countable, since the isolation of each of its points together with the fact
that rationals are dense in the reals means that the points of S may be mapped injectively onto a set of points
with rational coordinates, of which there are only countably many. However, not every countable set is
discrete, of which the rational numbers under the usual Euclidean metric are the canonical example.
A set with no isolated point is said to be dense-in-itself (every neighbourhood of a point contains other
points of the set). A closed set with no isolated point is called a perfect set (it contains all its limit points and
no isolated points).
The number of isolated points is a topological invariant, i.e. if two topological spaces and are
homeomorphic, the number of isolated points in each is equal.
Examples
Standard examples
Topological spaces in the following three examples are considered as subspaces of the real line with the
standard topology.
For the set , the point 0 is an isolated point.

For the set , each of the points 1/k is an isolated point, but 0 is
not an isolated point because there are other points in S as close to 0 as desired.
The set of natural numbers is a discrete set.
In the topological space with topology , the element is an isolated point,

even though belongs to the closure of (and is therefore, in some sense, "close" to ). Such a situation
is not possible in a Hausdorff space.
The Morse lemma states that non-degenerate critical points of certain functions are isolated.
Two counter-intuitive examples
Consider the set of points in the real interval such that every digit of their binary
representation fulfills the following conditions:
Either or .
only for finitely many indices .
If denotes the largest index such that , then .
If and , then exactly one of the following two conditions holds: or
.
Informally, these conditions means that every digit of the binary representation of that equals 1 belongs to
a pair ...0110..., except for ...010... at the very end.
Now, is an explicit set consisting entirely of isolated points but has the counter-intuitive property that its
closure is an uncountable set.[1]
Another set with the same properties can be obtained as follows. Let be the middle-thirds Cantor set,
let be the component intervals of , and let be a set consisting of one point from
each . Since each contains only one point from , every point of is an isolated point. However, if
is any point in the Cantor set, then every neighborhood of contains at least one , and hence at least one
point of . It follows that each point of the Cantor set lies in the closure of , and therefore has
uncountable closure.
See also
Acnode
Adherent point
Accumulation point
Point cloud
References
1. Gomez-Ramirez, Danny (2007), "An explicit set of isolated points in R with uncountable
closure" (http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=46815211), Matemáticas: Enseñanza
universitaria, Escuela Regional de Matemáticas. Universidad del Valle, Colombia, 15: 145–
147
External links
Weisstein, Eric W. "Isolated Point" (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/IsolatedPoint.html).
MathWorld.
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Isolated Point

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Isolated point

In mathematics, a point x is called an

For the set , the point 0 is an isolated point.

In the topological space with topology , the element is an isolated point,

Two counter-intuitive examples

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Isolated_point&oldid=1131195918"

This page was last edited on 3 January 2023, at 00:50 (UTC).

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