Relative ranks of Lipschitz mappings on countable discrete metric spaces

Let X be a countable discrete metric space and let XX denote the family of all functions on X. In this article, we consider the problem of finding the least cardinality of a subset A of XX such that every element of XX is a finite composition of elements of A and Lipschitz functions on X. It follows from a classical theorem of Sierpiński that such an A either has size at most 2 or is uncountable. We show that if X contains a Cauchy sequence or a sufficiently separated, in some sense, subspace, then |A|≤1. On the other hand, we give several results relating |A| to the cardinal d; defined as the minimum cardinality of a dominating family for NN. In particular, we give a condition on the metric of X under which |A|≥d holds and a further condition that implies |A|≤d. Examples satisfying both of these conditions include all subsets of Nk and the sequence of partial sums of the harmonic series with the usual euclidean metric. To conclude, we show that if X is any countable discrete subset of the real numbers R with the usual euclidean metric, then |A|=1 or almost always, in the sense of Baire category, |A|=d.