The American Mathematical Monthly

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Contractions of the Real Line

A. F. Beardon

To cite this article: A. F. Beardon (2006) Contractions of the Real Line, The American
Mathematical Monthly, 113:6, 557-558, DOI: 10.1080/00029890.2006.11920337

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00029890.2006.11920337

Published online: 31 Jan 2018.

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Thus ϒn is obtained by slicing off each “corner” Di of the simplex n at the midpoint
of each edge. But each Di is actually similar to n by a scaling factor of 1/2, so it has
measure (1/2)n−1 times the measure of n . Therefore,

µ(ϒn ) = µ(n ) − n(1/2)n−1 µ(n ) = [1 − n(1/2)n−1 ]µ(n ),

and the theorem follows.

Readers interested in geometric probability might want to see the books [4] and [6].
Those interested in the random division of an interval can consult the articles [1] and
[5]. Finally, those interested in similar problems can find some in [2, chap. 1, sec. 6],
[3], and [7].

REFERENCES

1. D. A. Darling, On a class of problems related to the random division of an interval, Ann. Math. Statist. 24
(1953) 239–253.
2. B. V. Gnedenko, The Theory of Probability, 4th ed., Chelsea, New York, 1968.
3. R. Honsberger, Ingenuity in Mathematics, Mathematical Association of America, Washington, D.C., 1970.
4. M. G. Kendall and P. A. P. Moran, Geometrical Probability, Griffin, London, 1963.
5. J. G. Mauldon, Random division of an interval, Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 47 (1951) 331–336.
6. H. Solomon, Geometric Probability, SIAM CBMS-NSF regional conference series in applied mathemat-
ics, no. 28, Philadelphia, 1978.
7. A. M. Yaglom and I. M. Yaglom, Challenging Mathematical Problems with Elementary Solutions, Holden
Day, San Francisco, 1964.

Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720

cdandrea@math.berkeley.edu
emgomez@math.berkeley.edu

Contractions of the Real Line

A. F. Beardon

The contraction mapping theorem states that if f is a map of a complete met-

ric space (X, d) into itself and if, for some k in (0, 1) and all x and y in X ,
d( f (x), f (y)) ≤ kd(x, y), then the iterates f n = f ◦ · · · ◦ f (n terms) of f con-
verge locally uniformly on X to a (unique) fixed point ζ of f . This theorem, which
is in most introductory courses on metric spaces, is usually accompanied by an
example to show that the inequality cannot be replaced by the weaker condition
d( f (x), f (y)) < d(x, y). The most common example of this type is f (x) = x + 1/x
acting on [1, +∞), but any map of the form f (x) = x + M − h(x) of R into itself with
|h(x)| < M and 0 < h  (x) < 1 will suffice (for example M = 1 and h(x) = tanh x).
In any of these examples f (x) > x, so that f has no fixed points. Also, for every x, the
sequence x, f (x), f 2 (x), . . . is strictly increasing and so must converge in the space
[−∞, +∞]. In fact, f n (x) → +∞, for otherwise f n (x) → a for some real a, and
then f ( f n (x)) → f (a) (because f is continuous) so that f (a) = a, which is not so.
Thus if we define f (+∞) to be +∞ and take a topological view, these examples are
no longer counterexamples. The following theorem, which does not seem to be widely

June–July 2006] NOTES 557

known, clarifies these ideas and provides an elementary, but interesting, adjunct to the
contraction mapping theorem.

Theorem. Suppose that f : R → R satisfies | f (x) − f (y)| < |x − y| whenever

x  = y. Then there is some ζ in [−∞, +∞] such that, for any real x, f n (x) → ζ as
n → ∞.

Proof. We suppose first that f has a fixed point, say ζ , in R. Then, from the contracting
property of f , ζ is the only fixed point of f . We may assume that ζ = 0, and this
implies that | f (x)| < |x| for all nonzero x. Thus, for any x, the sequence | f n (x)| is
decreasing, so converges to some nonnegative number µ(x). We want to show that
µ(x) = 0 for every x, so suppose now that x is such that µ(x) > 0. Then f maps
µ(x) and −µ(x) to points y1 and y2 , say, where |y j | < µ(x) for each j. Thus, as f
is continuous, there are open neighbourhoods of ±µ(x) that are mapped by f into
the open interval I = (−µ(x), µ(x)) that contains y1 and y2 . This implies that, for
sufficiently large n, f n (x) lies in I , which contradicts the fact that | f n (x)| ≥ µ(x) for
all n. Thus, for all x, µ(x) = 0 and f n (x) → 0.
Now suppose that f has no fixed point in R. Then the function f (x) − x is con-
tinuous and nonzero in R. By the intermediate value theorem, f (x) > x for all x,
or f (x) < x for all x. We may assume that f (x) > x for all x, as a similar argument
holds in the other case. Now the sequence f n (x) is strictly increasing, hence converges
to some ζ in R ∪ {+∞}. Moreover, ζ ∈ / R, else (as in the first paragraph) ζ would be
a fixed point of f . Thus f n (x) → +∞ for all x.

Remark. If ζ in the theorem is in R, then f (ζ ) = ζ . If ζ = +∞ it is natural to define

f (+∞) = +∞, and similarly for −∞. Then, in all cases, ζ is a fixed point of f .

The theorem proved in this note is not an isolated result, and the original motivation
for it came from complex analysis. The open unit disc D in C is the hyperbolic plane
with hyperbolic metric ρ, say. Any analytic map f : D → D that is not a Möbius
map of D onto itself satisfies ρ( f (z), f (w)) < ρ(z, w) and, moreover, the iterates f n
converge on D to some point ζ in the closure of D. These results are the Schwarz-
Pick lemma and the Denjoy-Wolff theorem, respectively. In fact, the convergence of
the iterates has nothing to do with the analyticity of f beyond the fact that it implies
that f is a hyperbolic contraction. More generally, it is possible to prove results about
the convergence of the iterates of contractions (in the weaker sense) in a metric space
if (roughly speaking) the distance between points xn and yn that are converging to
different boundary points is growing faster than the distance of xn , or yn , to some fixed
“origin.” This is typical of hyperbolic space, and it is certainly satisfied by the real
line. The proof of the theorem that we have given was suggested by the referee, but the
result also follows from the proof of these more general results. For more details, see
[1] and [2]. For other generalizations, see [3].

REFERENCES

1. A. F. Beardon, Iteration of contractions and analytic maps, J. London Math. Soc. 41 (1991) 141–150.
2. , The dynamics of contractions, Erg. Th. Dyn. Sys. 17 (1997) 1257–1266.
3. E. Rakotch, A note on contractive mappings, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 13 (1962) 459–465.

Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WB England
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