Descriptive set theory has been one of the main areas of research in set theory for almost a century. This text attempts to present a largely balanced approach, which combines many elements of the different traditions of the subject. It includes a wide variety of examples, exercises (over 400), and applications, in order to illustrate the general concepts and results of the theory.
This text provides a first basic course in classical descriptive set theory and covers material with which mathematicians interested in the subject for its own sake or those that wish to use it in their field should be familiar. Over the years, researchers in diverse areas of mathematics, such as logic and set theory, analysis, topology, probability theory, etc., have brought to the subject of descriptive set theory their own intuitions, concepts, terminology and notation.

This volume provides a self-contained introduction to some topics in orbit equivalence theory, a branch of ergodic theory. The first two chapters focus on hyperfiniteness and amenability. Included here are proofs of Dye's theorem that probability measure-preserving, ergodic actions of the integers are orbit equivalent and of the theorem of Connes-Feldman-Weiss identifying amenability and hyperfiniteness for non-singular equivalence relations. The presentation here is often influenced by descriptive set theory, and Borel and generic analogs of various results are discussed. The final chapter is a detailed account of Gaboriau's recent results on the theory of costs for equivalence relations and groups and its applications to proving rigidity theorems for actions of free groups.

Descriptive set theory has been one of the main areas of research in set theory for almost a century. This text attempts to present a largely balanced approach, which combines many elements of the different traditions of the subject. It includes a wide variety of examples, exercises (over 400), and applications, in order to illustrate the general concepts and results of the theory. This text provides a first basic course in classical descriptive set theory and covers material with which mathematicians interested in the subject for its own sake or those that wish to use it in their field should be familiar. Over the years, researchers in diverse areas of mathematics, such as logic and set theory, analysis, topology, probability theory, etc., have brought to the subject of descriptive set theory their own intuitions, concepts, terminology and notation.