Functional equations

Putting the funk in functions

February 6, 2017 — February 19, 2017

algebra
convolution
functional analysis
Hilbert space

Miscellaneous tricks with functions. The purer side of the functional wrangling which gets you, e.g. variational approximation.

1 Dan Piponi’s functional logarithms

Nice hack, Dan Piponi — Logarithms and exponentials of functions:

A popular question in mathematics is this: given a function f, what is its “square root” g in the sense that g(g(x))=f(x). […] I want to approach the problem indirectly. When working with real numbers we can find square roots, say, by using x=exp(12logx). I want to use an analogue of this for functions. So my goal is to make sense of the idea of the logarithm and exponential of a formal power series as composable functions.

2 Tom Leinster’s course

Tom Leinster taught a punchy course on functional equations (course notes here):

Today was a warm-up, focusing on Cauchy’s functional equation: which functions f:RR satisfy

f(x+y)=f(x)+f(y)x,yR?

He goes on to talk about Shannon entropy from a functional equation perspective, which is a refreshing derivation.

3 References

Aubrun, and Nechita. 2011. The Multiplicative Property Characterizes p and Lp Norms.” Confluentes Mathematici.
Granas, and Dugundji. 2003. Fixed Point Theory. Springer Monographs in Mathematics.