Measure space

A measure space is a basic object of measure theory, a branch of mathematics that studies generalized notions of volumes. It contains an underlying set, the subsets of this set that are feasible for measuring (the σ-algebra) and the method that is used for measuring (the measure). One important example of a measure space is a probability space. A measurable space consists of the first two components without a specific measure. A measure space is a triple where is a set is a σ-algebra on the set is a measure on In other words, a measure space consists of a measurable space together with a measure on it. Set . The -algebra on finite sets such as the one above is usually the power set, which is the set of all subsets (of a given set) and is denoted by Sticking with this convention, we set In this simple case, the power set can be written down explicitly: As the measure, define by so (by additivity of measures) and (by definition of measures). This leads to the measure space It is a probability space, since The measure corresponds to the Bernoulli distribution with which is for example used to model a fair coin flip. Most important classes of measure spaces are defined by the properties of their associated measures. This includes Probability spaces, a measure space where the measure is a probability measure Finite measure spaces, where the measure is a finite measure finite measure spaces, where the measure is a -finite measure Another class of measure spaces are the complete measure spaces.