Defining an Antiderivative for Monotone Functions I'm reading through a paper and I'm having troubl

Reed Eaton

Reed Eaton

Answered question

2022-06-14

Defining an Antiderivative for Monotone Functions
I'm reading through a paper and I'm having trouble following the logic of the following step.
"Suppose ψ : ( 0 , ) [ 0 , ) is a non-negative, non-decreasing function. Let Ψ be the primitive function of ψ, i.e. Ψ = ψ.
Can we actually do this? I believe monotonicity of ψ means that an antiderivative can indeed be defined, and would be continuous, but wouldn't it only be differentiable almost everywhere? In particular, at points of discontinuity of ψ (the set of which I believe will have measure zero, again by monotonicity) we cannot say Ψ = ψ?
In summary, is it instead true that Ψ = ψ a.e.?

Answer & Explanation

Cristian Hamilton

Cristian Hamilton

Beginner2022-06-15Added 23 answers

Explanation:
Yes you are right. The statement is in general false. Consider the monotonic function f on the reals such that f ( x ) = 0 for x 0 and f ( x ) = 1 + x for x > 0, if f = F for some F for all x then f must have the intermediate value property, but it clearly doesn't.

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