measure, in mathematics, generalization of the concepts of length and area to arbitrary sets of points not composed of intervals or rectangles. Abstractly, a measure is any rule for associating with a set a number that retains the ordinary measurement properties of always being nonnegative and such that the sum of the parts equals the whole. More formally, the measure of the union of two nonoverlapping sets is equal to the sum of their individual measures. The measure of an elementary set composed of a finite number of nonoverlapping rectangles can be defined simply as the sum of their areas found in the usual manner. (And analogously, the measure of a finite union of nonoverlapping intervals is the sum of their lengths.)
For other sets, such as curved regions or vaporous regions with missing points, the concepts of outer and inner measure must first be defined. The outer measure of a set is the number that is the lower bound of the area of all elementary rectangular sets containing the given set, while the inner measure of a set is the upper bound of the areas of all such sets contained in the region. If the inner and outer measures of a set are equal, this number is called its Jordan measure, and the set is said to be Jordan measurable.
Unfortunately, many important sets are not Jordan measurable. For example, the set of rational numbers from zero to one does not have a Jordan measure because there does not exist a covering composed of a finite collection of intervals with a greatest lower bound (ever smaller intervals can always be chosen). It has a measure, however, that can be found in the following way: The rational numbers are countable (can be put in a one-to-one relationship with the counting numbers 1, 2, 3,…), and each successive number can be covered by intervals of length 1/8, 1/16, 1/32,…, the total sum of which is 1/4, calculated as the sum of the infinite geometric series. The rational numbers could also be covered by intervals of lengths 1/16, 1/32, 1/64,…, the total sum of which is 1/8. By starting with smaller and smaller intervals, the total length of intervals covering the rationals can be reduced to smaller and smaller values that approach the lower bound of zero, and so the outer measure is 0. The inner measure is always less than or equal to the outer measure, so it must also be 0. Therefore, although the set of rational numbers is infinite, their measure is 0. In contrast, the irrational numbers from zero to one have a measure equal to 1; hence, the measure of the irrational numbers is equal to the measure of the real numbers—in other words, “almost all” real numbers are irrational numbers. The concept of measure based on countably infinite collections of rectangles is called Lebesgue measure.