Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Edited by P. Winkler
Péter Komjáth and Vilmos Totik
ISBN-10: 0-387-30293-X
ISBN-13: 978-0387-30293-5
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
springer.com
Dedicated to András Hajnal
and to the memory of
Paul Erdős and Géza Fodor
Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Part I Problems
1 Operations on sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Countability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3 Equivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4 Continuum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6 Ordered sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
7 Order types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
8 Ordinals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
9 Ordinal arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
10 Cardinals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
12 Transfinite enumeration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
13 Euclidean spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
14 Zorn’s lemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
viii Contents
15 Hamel bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
17 Ultrafilters on ω . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
18 Families of sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
20 Stationary sets in ω1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
22 Canonical functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
23 Infinite graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
25 ∆-systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
27 Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Part II Solutions
2 Countability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
3 Equivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
4 Continuum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
8 Ordinals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
10 Cardinals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
17 Ultrafilters on ω . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
25 ∆-systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
27 Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
3 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
Preface
Although the first decades of the 20th century saw some strong debates on set
theory and the foundation of mathematics, afterwards set theory has turned
into a solid branch of mathematics, indeed, so solid, that it serves as the
foundation of the whole building of mathematics. Later generations, honest
to Hilbert’s dictum, “No one can chase us out of the paradise that Cantor
has created for us” proved countless deep and interesting theorems and also
applied the methods of set theory to various problems in algebra, topology,
infinitary combinatorics, and real analysis.
The invention of forcing produced a powerful, technically sophisticated
tool for solving unsolvable problems. Still, most results of the pre-Cohen era
can be digested with just the knowledge of a commonsense introduction to
the topic. And it is a worthy effort, here we refer not just to usefulness, but,
first and foremost, to mathematical beauty.
In this volume we offer a collection of various problems in set theory. Most
of classical set theory is covered, classical in the sense that independence
methods are not used, but classical also in the sense that most results come
from the period, say, 1920–1970. Many problems are also related to other fields
of mathematics such as algebra, combinatorics, topology, and real analysis.
We do not concentrate on the axiomatic framework, although some as-
pects, such as the axiom of foundation or the rôle of the axiom of choice, are
elaborated.
There are no drill exercises, and only a handful can be solved with just
understanding the definitions. Most problems require work, wit, and inspira-
tion. Some problems are definitely challenging, actually, several of them are
published results.
We have tried to compose the sequence of problems in a way that earlier
problems help in the solution of later ones. The same applies to the sequence
of chapters. There are a few exceptions (using transfinite methods before
their discussion)—those problems are separated at the end of the individual
chapters by a line of asterisks.
We have tried to trace the origin of the problems and then to give proper
reference at the end of the solution. However, as is the case with any other
mathematical discipline, many problems are folklore and tracing their origin
was impossible.
The reference to a problem is of the form “Problem x.y” where x denotes
the chapter number and y the problem number within Chapter x. However,
within Chapter x we omit the chapter number, so in that case the reference
is simply “Problem y”.
For the convenience of the reader we have collected into an appendix all
the basic concepts and notations used throughout the book.
tation. Collecting and writing up the problems took many years, during which
the authors have been funded by various grants from the Hungarian National
Science Foundation for Basic Research and from the National Science Foun-
dation (latest grants are OTKA T046991, T049448 and NSF DMS-040650).
We hope the readers will find as much enjoyment in solving some of the
problems as we have found in writing them up.