Let for a bounded normal operator on a nonzero complex Hilbert space. The zero Hilbert space has the trivial calculus. Take the inner product linear in its first argument. The continuous functional calculus is an isometric unital star-representation with . The Borel calculus will act on , the algebra of actual bounded Borel measurable functions. A quotient by null functions is introduced only after specifying the spectral measure; there is no preferred scalar measure such as plane area on .
Here is a construction that also covers a nonseparable Hilbert space. For , the positive functional has a finite regular Borel measure by the Riesz-Markov-Kakutani representation theorem. On continuous functions,
Continuous functions are dense in . Hence extends to a unitary map from that space onto . This subspace reduces and , which correspond to multiplication by and . Decompose as an orthogonal direct sum of such cyclic reducing subspaces, using maximality: a nonzero vector in the remaining orthogonal complement would generate another summand. The family need not be countable. This is the cyclic multiplication model for a normal operator.
On each summand define to be multiplication by , for , and take their bounded direct sum. It defines a unital star-homomorphism
Thus , , and positivity of gives positivity of . The continuous functional calculus is recovered on .
Set for a Borel subset of . Then is an orthogonal projection, , , and disjoint countable unions add in the strong operator topology. Indeed on every multiplication summand the indicators add pointwise, and the tail squared norm is the measure of a decreasing sequence of sets tending to the empty set. Thus is a projection-valued measure, and
For , polarization gives scalar measures satisfying . Regularity of these finite scalar measures and uniqueness in the Riesz-Markov-Kakutani representation theorem make the projection-valued measure unique: its values on continuous functions determine all scalar measures and hence every projection. This also makes the calculus independent of the chosen cyclic decomposition.
The correct convergence assertion is bounded pointwise convergence in the strong operator topology. If pointwise and , then
by the dominated convergence theorem. This need not be convergence in operator norm. For multiplication by on , the functions converge pointwise to , their operators converge strongly to zero, but their operator norms are all one.
A Borel measurable function can vanish spectrally without vanishing pointwise. Precisely, if and only if for every , and
The upper norm bound follows by integrating against vector measures; a unit vector in any nonzero projection gives . The induced map on the quotient by these spectral-null Borel measurable functions is isometric. Every nonempty relatively open subset of has nonzero spectral projection, since otherwise a nonzero continuous function supported there would contradict faithfulness of the continuous functional calculus. This full support gives the usual continuous spectral mapping theorem, but for a Borel measurable function the exact statement is instead
If an indicated neighborhood has zero projection, define a bounded reciprocal of off it and zero on it; the calculus supplies an inverse. Conversely unit vectors in the nonzero projections for arbitrarily small neighborhoods give arbitrarily small, contradicting invertibility. This is spectral essential range in Borel functional calculus. For example in the multiplication model on , although the pointwise range of that function is .
Spectral projections provide reducing subspaces, and : the squared norm of is . In finite dimension the calculus is simply , the sum over eigenspaces. In general it also permits discontinuous cuts and Borel choices of square roots, such as with , giving a normal operator with even when a continuous scalar branch is unavailable.
Any bounded operator commuting with both and commutes with their continuous functional calculus and with all . To justify the latter, regularity approximates by uniformly bounded continuous functions in the norms of any finite list of vector measures; the resulting net converges strongly to . Thus the Borel calculus lies in the Von Neumann algebra generated by . On a separable Hilbert space, a countable dense list of vectors gives a controlling measure ; spectral-null sets are exactly its null sets, and the range is the represented , equal to that Von Neumann algebra. Without separability this last equality is not automatic: for the diagonal operator with one eigenvector for each , the generated Von Neumann algebra has arbitrary bounded diagonal functions, while the original Borel calculus has Borel diagonal functions. The spectral-measure construction and the strong convergence theorem themselves require no separability. This distinguishes the Borel functional calculus for a normal operator from its continuous predecessor without confusing pointwise functions, spectral equivalence classes and topological closure.
Put and use the continuous functional calculus . It is a unital star-homomorphism taking the coordinate function to . This follows from the commutative C-star theorem applied to , together with spectral permanence for C-star subalgebras, which is among the permitted C-star results.
Take the Hilbert space inner product linear in its first variable. For a vector , let . This cyclic subspace is invariant under every and its adjoint, so it is reducing. The functional is positive because implies . It has, by the Riesz-Markov-Kakutani representation theorem, a finite regular positive Borel measure on . The identity
makes an isometry on its quotient by the functions of zero norm. Density of continuous functions in extends it to a unitary . Multiplication by a continuous function intertwines with on this subspace.
Choose a maximal family of mutually orthogonal nonzero cyclic reducing subspaces. Their orthogonal sum is all of : otherwise its reducing orthogonal complement contains a nonzero vector generating another such subspace. This argument does not require separability. For a bounded Borel measurable function on , multiplication on every is bounded with norm at most . Define on that orthogonal sum
Multiplication operators satisfy , and . The same identities hold for their direct sums, and the norm bound is uniform in . Thus is a norm-decreasing unital star-homomorphism on the algebra of actual bounded Borel measurable functions, and because it extends . No quotient by a single unspecified measure is being substituted for that Borel algebra.
Choose the bounded Borel measurable square root and for , taking . Let . Then
Thus every bounded normal operator has a normal square root. The Borel branch is essential in general: on a circle winding about zero a continuous square-root branch need not exist.
Values at the endpoint one do not affect any of the conclusions, since . Set to define each random variable everywhere, and choose a Borel measurable function agreeing with almost everywhere if necessary. These choices leave all integrals and almost-sure assertions unchanged.
Every dyadic interval at level lies in a dyadic interval at level . Equivalently, is a measurable function of , so : these sigma-algebras form a filtration. Since the uniform distribution of gives , the conditional expectations are integrable and adapted. The tower property of conditional expectation gives
Thus is a martingale, and part (a) proves that it is uniformly integrable.
For , the event is an atom of a sigma-algebra , with probability . The value of the conditional expectation there is therefore
Consequently This also shows directly that .
By the uniformly integrable martingale convergence theorem, there is an integrable such that almost surely and in the L1 norm. To identify this limit, put . Since away from the harmless endpoint, , and is -measurable. Conversely every is a measurable function of . Thus , and both and have -measurable versions.
For , the defining property of conditional expectation gives whenever . Passing to the limit in the L1 norm yields
The increasing union is an algebra of sets generating . The class of events for which this integral identity holds is a Dynkin system, so the pi-lambda theorem extends the identity to every . Since both random variables are measurable there, uniqueness of conditional expectation gives almost surely. We have proved that the dyadic conditional averages recover integrable functions:
because a probability-one assertion for is a full-Lebesgue measure assertion for . Likewise, the uniform distribution of turns convergence in L1 into
No pointwise continuity of is required.
Choose a Borel measurable function version of the posterior success probability . Conditional on , predicting zero has error probability and predicting one has error probability . A Bayes classifier for zero-one loss is therefore
Either decision is optimal when . The displayed Bayes risk also equals and is unaffected by changing on a -null set.
For any measurable set , independence and the uniform distribution of give
Likewise the probability with label zero is . These sets determine the joint probability distribution, so
The same construction makes all training pairs independent and identically distributed random variables.
Fix a feature-measurable nearest-neighbour tie-breaking rule, for example increasing original index for observations at equal Euclidean norm distance from the query. This is important: the ordering may depend on the features, but not on the or labels. Let be the label attached to the th ordered feature. The classifier from the K-nearest neighbors algorithm is
The displayed rule resolves a tied vote in favour of one; any fixed vote convention would also define the method. When , this is the one-nearest-neighbour classifier .
Write for the selected original index. Conditional on all features , it is fixed, and is still uniform on . The two decisions being compared are
The latter is an oracle comparison rule: its relabeling is recomputed at each query , rather than being a fixed relabeling of the training data for all queries. For a variable with the uniform distribution on , the two threshold indicators at differ exactly when lies between them, an interval of length . This Bernoulli coupling by a shared uniform random variable proves
Take the test pair independent of the training data and its auxiliary uniforms. Let , and interpret as conditional misclassification risk given . The tower property of conditional expectation gives . Conditional on the test feature and all training features, and are independent variables with a Bernoulli distribution of parameter . Consequently, for every ,
This is an exact finite-sample equality, not merely a limit.
The two error indicators can differ only if the two classifiers disagree, so
The permitted nearest-neighbour approximation theorem states that the last expected value tends to zero for the feature-based selection rule. This establishes the one-nearest-neighbour asymptotic risk
For , put . Then , and . Integrating gives the Bayes risk bound for one-nearest-neighbour classification
Thus a one-nearest-neighbour classifier need not achieve the Bayes risk: for constant , its limiting misclassification risk is , while .
Feature-based neighbour tie-breaking is required. The convention cannot be dropped for arbitrary . For a counterexample, take almost surely and constant , and choose among the coincident neighbours the one with the smallest . Then the predicted label is one with probability , so its misclassification risk tends to , exceeding the claimed upper bound . The corrected theorem uses ties determined independently of the uniforms and labels, as above.
The Borel sigma-algebra is the smallest sigma-algebra containing all open subsets of . A real-valued Borel measurable function on is a map with for every . It suffices to test the sets for rational , because these generate the Borel sigma-algebra.
Here “Borel function” describes measurability into the Borel structure of the target; the domain need not itself be a topological space.
Let be Borel measurable and converge pointwise to the finite real value . For every real ,
If , choose a rational strictly between them; convergence puts eventually. Conversely eventual strict inequality implies . The right side belongs to by its countable union/intersection operations. Since these half-lines generate the Borel sigma-algebra, is a Borel measurable function.
A function is Borel measurable when
is a Borel set for every Borel set . It is enough to require this for every open set, or for every interval of the form .
For a cost that is a Borel measurable function, a transport map is a measurable whose pushforward measure satisfies
The Monge optimal transport problem moves every source point to one destination:
The Kantorovich optimal transport problem permits mass to split. Its admissible transport plans are the probability measures on with prescribed marginal distributions:
Thus a transport plan is a coupling of probability distributions. The set is never empty: it contains the product measure . Signed costs can also be used when their integrals are well defined, for example with an integrable lower bound of the form .
On the Polish space , take the Dirac measures
Every measurable map satisfies , which cannot equal . A transport map cannot split an atom of a measure, whereas the transport plan can.
Because every subset of is open, the Borel sigma-algebra of a discrete space is
If or and is a Borel subset of the codomain, then is some subset of , hence is Borel. Thus every such function is a Borel measurable function.
The quantile function is nondecreasing, hence a Borel measurable function. More explicitly, for every ,
Thus is a random variable, and because Lebesgue measure is being used on ,
Its cumulative distribution function is therefore , so
This is inverse transform sampling.
A deterministic càdlàg function is Borel measurable. The sets and show that is contained in . Therefore every deterministic càdlàg function, regarded as a process constant in , is predictable.
For a bounded Borel measurable function and the projection-valued measure of a normal operator, the displayed set is the spectrum of an element of . Outside it, a bounded reciprocal away from a spectral-null set supplies the inverse. Inside it, unit vectors supported by the indicated arbitrarily small spectral sets make fail to be bounded below. The kernel of the calculus consists of functions satisfying for every , and its norm is the corresponding essential supremum. Ordinary pointwise range is insufficient: for multiplication by on , even though the function takes the value .