What can we say about the cardinality of the set of functions satisfying the following three conditions?
i) for all real numbers and
ii) The cardinality of the set is exactly equal to 2.
iii) The function has a value different from 1 and -1.
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One of the possible solutions of the given functional equation is the function defined by F ( x , y ) ≡ 0 , but in this case, the range of F would contain exactly one number. If there is a pair of real numbers ( a , b ) , such that F ( a , b ) = 0 , then we can prove that F = 0 because F ( x , y ) = F ( x , a ) F ( a , y ) = F ( x , a ) F ( a , b ) F ( b , y ) = 0 , and again the cardinality of the range of the function F would be one.
So, for a function F to satisfy the two given conditions, F ( x , y ) = 0 for all real numbers x , and y . Now, assume that F is different from 0 and satisfies the conditions i) and ii). Then using condition i) with z = 0 , we obtain that F ( x , y ) = F ( y , 0 ) F ( x , 0 ) ( ∗ ) Using ii) the number of different possible values of F ( x , 0 ) must be one or two. If the number of values of the function F ( x , 0 ) was one then according to (*) the range of F would contain only one number and this would contradict ii). In the case, that F ( x , 0 ) had two values, we have two possibilities: the values are 1 and -1, or at least one of the two values is different from 1 and -1. The first situation would contradict the condition iii) because the function F ( x , y ) would have only two possible values, 1 or -1. Then let us assume that F ( x , 0 ) has two different values a and b where at least one of them is different from 1 and -1. This also leads to a contradiction because the range of F would contain the set { a , b , 1 , b a , a b } that has at least cardinality 3.
Then there is no function F satisfying the conditions i) and ii). Therefore the answer to the question is 0 .