Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-distribution-theory-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/1/a/iv/solution
Past exam of the distribution theory course of the University of Oxford 2023 1 a iv Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
The bound proves uniform convergence of the series by the Weierstrass M-test. Each summand is continuous and satisfies , so its sum , the Takagi function, is continuous and has period one.
For , both and are integers, giving . ThereforeThe corners of occur on the grid . When , that grid is contained in , so the interior of contains no corner of . Its slope on this interval is consequently or .
The interval is a half of . All the old slopes persist on this half, and the new summand contributes one more slope in . ThusIf had a finite derivative at , write with . Since and both endpoints tend to ,Indeed ; when , its remainder is zero. This is the secants straddling a differentiability point argument, including dyadic . But the displayed increments prevent from converging. Hence , using periodicity to cover all real .
For the distributional derivative, set , using from part (iii). The change of variable in the distributional derivative pairing gives ; these are the Rademacher functions. Uniform convergence implies weak convergence of distributions, and the continuity of distributional differentiation allows termwise differentiation in that topology. Explicitly,This series assertion is a distributional convergence statement. Its remainder satisfies the concrete estimateIt supplies a well-defined distributional derivative even though the ordinary derivative exists nowhere.
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