Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics - Spaces

2300 Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics: Spaces
Michael D. Alder February 18, 2010
With Jokes
Contents
1 Introduction 1.1 Some really woolly, vague ideas . . 1.2 Course Objectives and Books to get 1.3 Denitions and why we like them . 1.3.1 Latin versus Algebra . . . . 1 1 3 4 5 7 7 14 17 25 28 31 32 34 34 35 36 38 41 46
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
2 Sets and Logic 2.1 Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Propositional Calculus . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Predicate Calculus . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 More about Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Aside: Russells Paradox . . . . . . . 2.3.2 The Algebra of Sets . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 Set Dierences . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.4 Cartesian Products of Sets . . . . . . 2.3.5 Sets of Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Equivalence Relations and Partitions 2.4.2 Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.3 Finite and Innite sets . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3 Metric Spaces 49 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 3.2 Denition of a Metric Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 3.3 Examples of Metric Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 i
ii 3.3.1 Subspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Other Metric Spaces . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Alternative Metrics on Rn . . . . . . . 3.3.4 Function Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maps between Metric Spaces . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.1 The Chewing Gum World . . . . . . . 3.4.2 Making intuitions precise: an example 3.4.3 Equivalence of metrics . . . . . . . . . 3.4.4 Composites of Continuous maps . . . . Open Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sequences in Metric Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6.1 Fixed points of continuous maps . . . . What is a real number? . . . . . . . . . . . . Quotient Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 58 58 60 63 63 68 74 75 76 82 85 87 91 97 97 98 99 102 103 103 107 113
3.4
3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8
4 Topological Spaces and Manifolds 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Topological Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Examples of Topological Spaces . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 The Product and Subspace Topologies . . . . 4.2.3 Concluding Remarks about General Topology 4.3 Manifolds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Surfaces obtained by glueings . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Algebra and Arithmetic A.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . A.2 Unary Operations, Operators A.3 Binary Operations . . . . . . A.4 Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.4.1 Subgroups . . . . . . . A.4.2 Group Actions . . . . A.5 Rings and Fields . . . . . . . A.5.1 Rings . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
115 . 115 . 115 . 116 . 118 . 121 . 122 . 123 . 123
CONTENTS A.5.2 Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.6 Arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.6.1 The Euclidean Algorithm in Z A.6.2 Properties of the gcd . . . . . A.6.3 Primes . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.6.4 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . A.6.5 Linear Congruences . . . . . . A.6.6 Properties of Congruences . . A.6.7 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . A.6.8 Division in Congruences . . . A.6.9 Examples: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
iii 128 129 130 133 134 135 135 135 136 137 137
iv
CONTENTS
Preface
This is an outline of half of the course Fundamental Concepts in Mathematics given to second year students in the second semester of 2010 at the University of Western Australia. The course is half algebra and half something else. I am in charge of the something else. I have made sure it is as geometric and topological as possible. I have included as an appendix some notes on the algebra part of the unit which students may nd helpful. I didnt write all of them, Alice Niemeyer gets the credit for the Arithmetic part. In case you are a student confused by rst year, or still have the residue of school indoctrination which may have suced to get you through rst year, the idea is that this is supposed to be interesting but dicult and involve you in some hard thinking. The object is not to memorise a pile of meaningless junk and then solemnly tell it back to me at examination time. Nor is it my job to get you through the exam. Your job is to try to understand some very, very strange ideas and ensure that you can use them. My job is the transmission of the Western Intellectual Tradition, which is not in very good shape these days, and has as a central element the idea that you can argue ferociously with people and remain friends. In particular this tradition includes arguing with your lecturer if you think he is wrong, or ticking him o if you nd him unintelligible. I shall try to say, and write, lots of truly frightful things to get you into the swing of it. If you nd yourself abusing me in class, you may be getting it more or less right; if you nd yourself pursing your lips and complaining to your friends, you arent. It may astonish some students, but people who argue with me in class usually get higher marks than those who dont, although it may depend a bit on what they argue about. This may seem strange, but if you dont approach your university life in a spirit of open ended enquiry you wont get much from it. If you assume that everything is cut and dried and all you have to do is learn the facts, teaching you Mathematics is a waste of time and rather like training a chimpanzee v
vi
CONTENTS
into correct table manners. This is fundamentally pointless, and hard on the chimpanzee. Contrary to everything you may have heard thus far, Mathematics is for human beings and we do it for fun. It takes patience, hard mental work, imagination and concentration on detail. You have to combine the focus of an unusually anal-retentive accountant with the imagination of three drunken Irish poets. Or two drunken Welsh poets. This explains why although mathematicians are only rarely well equipped with a surplus of actual cash, there is a notable shortage of us starving in the gutter. Employers with any brains value mathematicians, and hey, who wants to work for the dumb ones? Some of these observations may strike readers from outside the University as too obvious to be worth mentioning; sad experience has persuaded me that they will not generally be believed until after the examination, some not until after the nal examination. Finally an important matter for students. There are lots of things in this text which, following tradition, I call exercises. It is true that doing them builds up mental muscles and makes you smarter. I have however chosen them for another reason: in most cases if you do them you will nd out something for yourself which is interesting and often beautiful. The joy of seeing something striking for yourself is the main reason mathematicians do Mathematics. The pleasure of having a sudden insight is considerable, better than sex some have said1 . Anyway, I hope that solving some of them gives you as much pleasure as I have got out of them. Mike Alder, 2010.
I would agree with this claim. Although I must admit, you can get through a lot of sex in the time it takes to solve some problems. I have discovered, to my great disappointment, that although sex and Mathematics use dierent parts of the brain and other relevant bits of anatomy, it is not practicable to multi-task and do both at once. Not, at least, for males.
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Some really woolly, vague ideas
It has been said that there are two basic kinds of idea in Mathematics, Algebra and Topology. Algebra is mainly about structures in which you can do addition and/or multiplication or something that looks rather like them. For example, you can add and/or multiply integers, (whole numbers), rational numbers (fractions), real numbers (decimals), complex numbers, matrices, functions and a whole lot of other things, most of which you havent yet heard of. Topology, on the other hand, is where we have an idea of spaciness, a notion of things being scattered around and having location; where there is some notion of some things being closer than other things, the whole lot of them taking up some, well, space. The real line and R2 are clearly both spacy things and algebraic things. It is true that you can add and multiply real numbers and you can add vectors in R2 . (You can also multiply them, but then we usually call it C and refer to them as the complex numbers.) But forget about adding and multiplying in R or R2 ; suppose youd never heard of either of these operations. Then you could still draw a long line and mark some numbers on it, or a plane and mark some axes and pairs of numbers, and youd still therefore have a spacy kind of thing in both cases. The rst case is a one dimensional spacy thing, the second is a two dimensional spacy thing, and you can see how this could be extended to higher dimensions. Exercise 1.1.1. Could you give something that is zero dimensional but still spacy? At this stage, since nothing has been dened and we have only a tenuous idea of the entire subject (assuming there is one), your guess is as good as anybodys. What about spacy things which dont have a dimension? Or a dimension which is a fraction? Or a two dimensional spacy thing which 1
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
isnt R2 , or pretty much the same as R2 ? Any oers? When we compute an innite series, we are writing down an innite collection of numbers or functions which are getting closer to some limiting number or function. This is quite useful; in real life we seldom get exactly what we want, but we may have to settle for something which is close enough. A bloke may have to settle for a girl-friend who, in the space of beautiful girls, is quite a long way from Helen of Troy1 . Given an innite series, to get the actual value of an approximation we may have to do something algebraic; that is, add and multiply some numbers or functions. Or even, gasp, do some division. So Algebra is a Good Thing. But the critical question is likely to be, is the result close enough? when we express a function as a limit, as for example x2 x3 + + ex = 1 + x + 2! 3! we really want to believe that the farther down the series we go the closer we get to the actual function we want to calculate a value of. So something other than Algebra is also necessary. And could there actually be a space of beautiful girls, with Helen of Troy in there as one point and, say, Julia Roberts as another one? If this makes any sense, there would seem to be something totally spacy and unalgebraic about this, since there is no obvious way of adding or multiplying beautiful girls. Exercise 1.1.2. Can you devise a way of having a space of beautiful girls? Given that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there might be a dierent space of beautiful girls for each of us. Given, also, that beautiful girls start o as babies (beautiful in the eyes of their parents) and nish up as, well, less beautiful in most eyes, possibly raddled old hags in others2 does this mean that actual real girls move through the space as they get older? Falling o the edge at some point? Or is the whole idea totally dotty? Or possibly not dotty enough? In this unit, your algebra lecturer, John Bamberg, will be telling you about the algebraic structures and I shall be telling you about the spacy ones. Both are important in serious Mathematics, which gets richer and more exciting when we have both structures to use. In fact in all the Mathematics you
Or . Fill in your own approximation. Helen of Troy was supposed to be very beautiful and had the face that, according to Kit Marlowe, launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Illium. This gives rise to the unit of female beauty known as the milliHelen, which the amount of beauty sucient to launch one ship and burn a small shed. Google milliHelen 2 Elizabeth Taylor springs to mind.
1
1.2. COURSE OBJECTIVES AND BOOKS TO GET
have met so far you have had both structures mixed up; this is because the Mathematics you have met so far is aimed, not unreasonably, at the cases where we have had some successes, most using Dierential and Integral Calculus. These are the cases where we need all the structure we can get. Much of the history of the mathematics of the last century consisted of disentangling them in order to understand them better. In the simplest things we shall be looking at, there will be mainly one type of structure so as to make them easier to understand: we shall therefore be looking at the simplest, starkest examples of each of these kinds of thing.You signed up for Fundamental Concepts, and that is exactly what you will be getting.
1.2
Course Objectives and Books to get
My objectives in this course are as follows: To develop your geometric intuitions so that you can see what things are probably true To develop your logical reasoning ability so you can see which things arent To introduce you to the key ideas on the spacy side of Mathematics To get you into the swing of the Western Intellectual Tradition, much of which is about being able to argue ferociously with people and stay friends with them. I recommend that you read The Shape of Space by Jerey Weeks. It is a good book to buy, being a whole lot of fun and useful for third year. But to convince yourself of this you can read it o the screen from the electronic version the library has. It will give you some feel for spacy things. I also recommend you to get hold of George Simmons book An Introduction to Topology and Modern Analysis. Cheap from Amazon and excellent value for money. Enough to keep you informed for years. Some people call the spacy side of maths Topology and others call it Geometry and I am the only person in the world to talk about the spacy side of maths. The advantage of my terminology is that it suggests something of what it is about. The disadvantage is that we have only the uest idea what it means, and mathematicians are not keen on u. So you will get some sense for what my half of the course is about if you take it that there is some vague and uy idea in our heads of what spaciness means, and that the
whole problem is to try to make that idea clear. Or at least, as Slartibartfast observed, clearer.
1.3
Denitions and why we like them
If we stick to woolly expressions such as the spacy side of maths we shall be no better than arts students and politicians who never know what they are talking about and often prefer you shouldnt have a clear idea either. The French call it blague, the English used to call it humbug but nowadays more forthright Aussies call it bullshit. I hope your linguistic taboos do not preclude my using this3 technical term. It is a bullshit world, but I have to disappoint anyone who thinks that the spacy side of maths will involve bullshit. It most denitely does not. Scientists and Engineers do not much like bullshit. You cant build a working machine out of the stu. Mathematicians really, really dont like it. We see Mathematics as a sort of bullshit lter. Much of the creative side of Mathematics consists of having a vague, intuitive idea about something and trying to make it precise by saying it in algebra. This is dicult and often a lot of work, but there are many payos. For a start, you feel a lot cleaner. So vagueness is not bullshit, bullshit is when you are vague and hazy but are pretending you are not. Admitting you are vague and hazy is ne. And quite liberating.
Awful Warning!
Students, in my lengthy experience, try to remember what they were told, and when faced with something too taxing for them, fall back on bullshit. No doubt they picked up this habit at school, and it may work in some subjects, but it irritates mathematicians no end. You are much better o confessing to ignorance than trying to fool us. We are used to ignorance, yours and our own, and it doesnt worry us unduly. But an attempt to make us believe you understand something when you dont will always be investigated and exposed.
End of Awful Warning

3
An English philosopher has written a book about it with precisely this title.
1.3. DEFINITIONS AND WHY WE LIKE THEM
1.3.1
Latin versus Algebra
An example of cleaning up a uy idea to great advantage occurred in the seventeenth century. (Actually it happens all the time, but the seventeenth century example I shall give is suciently far back in time to be easily comprehensible, while later ones frequently are not.) The basic idea was the quantity of motion of a solid object like a cannon ball or a thrown brick. The philosophers of the fteenth century and earlier (there were no scientists then, they called themselves natural philosophers 4 had the rm conviction that a light object moving fast could have the same quantity of motion or amount of oomph as a heavier object moving slowly. They wanted to make this idea precise, so they said it in Latin, the most precise language available in the middle ages, and they called this the vis viva 5 , which roughly translates as the living force, and has faint overtones of Star Wars. Personally, I prefer oomph. It sounds better, and it confronts the essential vagueness of the idea instead of trying to disguise it by saying it in Latin. They realised that if you whacked something hard, it would move o and the amount of oomph (sorry, vis viva) imparted to the object was related to the amount of whack. The whack might be imparted by hitting it with a stick or setting o a charge of gunpowder behind it. The military question was, was it better to have a very heavy cannon ball moving slower than a light one or a light one going very fast, if your object was to blow your way through a castle wall? Or didnt it matter? A theoretical analysis of this issue was a bit dicult if you have to reason in Latin with no better term than vis viva or amount of oomph. Along comes algebra. We can dene the quantity of motion as the mass of the object multiplied by its velocity, mv for short. Or, bugger it, we could dene it as half the mass of the object multiplied by the square of the velocity, mv 2 /2. Once you go to algebra you discover that hidden under the cloak of the vis viva there is not one idea but two. Both are important 6 . You simply cant see this if you stick to Latin. The language simply doesnt have the power to resolve similar but dierent ideas. It is clear that there is no serious hope of doing any hard thinking about the movement of cannon balls (or anything else) if your basic ideas are uy around the edges. Bullshit in, bullshit out. But if we can nail the ideas down
Nowadays all the natural philosophers call themselves scientists and the unnatural philosophers call themselves philosophers. 5 My Latin master at school would have pronounced this as Wiss We-Wah. How the mediaeval philosophers pronounced it I have no idea. 6 Both are conserved.
4
with sucient precision, then we can hope to get somewhere interesting by thinking about things. It did in fact work for cannon balls. Also planets and spacecraft. Exercise 1.3.1. Can you decide whether it is better to have small cannon balls going fast or big ones going slowly if your objective is to knock down a castle wall? Warning: children, do not try this at home with gunpowder. It is alright to try it at home with algebra and much cheaper and safer. Although possibly not as much fun. Note that this was a serious practical problem in the middle ages, and was solved by experiment. This is why you no longer have to worry about the lord of the manor coming down to exercise his droit de Seigneur on your wedding day. Exercise 1.3.2. Would the same considerations apply in the pre-gunpowder situation of a ballista? Are you better o having a bunch of arrows going slowly or one going really fast if your aim is to knock down a wooden wall?
Chapter 2 Sets and Logic

2.1 Basics
Mathematicians are obsessed with sets. Arent we all, I hear you say, but the word was sets. In Mathematics we dene everything in terms of sets. What a set is is left a bit vague, but you cant dene everything or youd have a circularity1 . What we do is to write down carefully the basic properties of sets. You will nd this done in the Appendix to Kelleys General Topology and there are other books which do it in more detail. We need to say certain basic things exist and show that if they do then other things do too2 . The rst and most basic rule is to say that if we have some names of things, any things you like, then we can form a set consisting of the things and write
It should be obvious that dening a wopticle as a kind of thrux and a thrux as something that might be a wopticle does not advance our understanding of either. It follows that we cannot dene everything in terms of other things also dened. So we must start somewhere without a denition. Does this mean that we can never really know what we are talking about? 2 The question What is a thing ? is rather puzzling too. You look arround and see a world with trees and people and houses and lots of other things. But your retina merely records various patches of colour; it is your brain which aggregates some of them into things. It is not entirely silly to say that things do not actually exist in the outside world, they are created by brains. Of course, brains wouldnt create them unless they were in some sense there, but that sense can be rather obscure. Trees we might say are actually there in the outside world, or creating them as things would be pointless. But what about Honour, Justice, Decency, Mercy? As Terry Pratchett observes, you can grind down the entire universe to its atomic components and you wont nd a particle of Mercy in it anywhere. Does this mean that Mercy does not exist? What about Truth? If Truth does not exist, why are scientists so anxious to pursue it? If you dont believe that Mercy or Justice exist, then you wont expect to get any in your examination, will you?
1
CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC
down a name for it by putting braces (curly brackets) around the names and commas in between them. Thus: {a, b} is a set, or more accurately a name of a set, which contains a thing called a and a thing called b. They might be dierent things and they might not: sometimes the same thing has more than one name. If X is a set and it contains something, a, then I write a X and this means that the thing called a is a member of the set called X. Formally: Denition 2.1.1. If X is a set and a is anything whatever, we write aX when and only when it is true that the set X contains the thing a as an element. Thus, a {a, b} The set does not have any particular order to its elements, thus I claim that {a, b} = {b, a} I cannot prove this yet because I havent said what = means. Give me time. As you can see, we are being almost incredibly fussy. If you want to build secure mathematics you need to get the foundations right. I may say that this is still pretty simple, and serious set theory is even more fussy. For an example of set builder notation, we could designate the set of people in this room by nding out everyones name, and writing a list of them inside braces. Or we could call it the set of people in this room. This would be quicker, but I claim these are just dierent names for the same set. One of the rst axioms is to say that there exists a set called the empty set written as . There is absolutely nothing in it whatever; the statement x for any name x of any thing whatever is always false. It immediately follows from the above set-builder rule that there is also a set {} Are these dierent? Yes, the second one has something inside it, namely a set, and the rst one does not. We could write = {} as an equality between sets. Of course we need to say precisely when two sets are equal: Im still coming to that.
2.1. BASICS From the denition of what means, it follows that {} is a true statement. On the other hand is not true.
Denition 2.1.2. If A and B are sets, we say that A is a subset of B and write A B if and only if for any thing whatever called a, then if it is true that a A then it is also true that a B. Note that A B and A B are quite dierent claims. Exercise 2.1.1. Could they both be true for some choice of A and B? Either convince me that they cannot or give an example where they are. Exercise 2.1.2. Prove carefully that For all sets A,B,C A B and B C AC
Note that for any set A whatever, A is true. There is no need to say is true at the end, since it is a proposition. So in future I shant. Denition 2.1.3. If A and B are sets then we say they are equal and write A = B if, and only if, A B and B A. I also dene two useful notions; here the symbol means that I am dening the thing on the left of the symbol to be the thing on the right. This is not the same as saying they are equal, since it makes sense to ask you to prove something is equal to something else, but not if it was dened to be. Denition 2.1.4. If A and B are sets, the union of A and B is the set AB {x : x A or x B}
This means that the union of two sets is the set which contains some thingy x if and only if either x A or x B (or both). Denition 2.1.5. If A and B are sets, the intersection of A and B is the set A B {x : x A and x B}
10
This means that the intersection of two sets is the set which contains some thingy x if and only if it is in both A and B: x A and x B. Going back to our set-builder process, we agreed that if a and b (and possibly other things) were taken together we could form a set by listing the names in any order and putting braces around them, and this named the set of the lot of them. It followed that if you believe is a set, then you must believe that {} is also a set, and indeed a dierent one. It also follows that {, {}} is also a set. Note that has nothing in it, {} has one thing in it and {, {}} has two dierent things in it. We could keep doing this for a looooong time. For reasons which will appear shortly, I shall call these things Natural Numbers. Suppose I set up a process as follows: is a natural number, and moreover a set, and the set {} is another natural number called the successor of . For short I shall write b = s(a) when b is the successor of a. Every natural number will have a unique successor. Suppose I have some collection W of natural numbers containing (or possibly being ) and such that whenever some natural number n is in this set W , so long as n = , there is an element m W and s(m) = n. So far, this only makes sense if W = {, {}}, or W = {}, or W = , but I shall extend it right now. First I shall say that W is itself a natural number, and then I shall say that the successor of W , s(W ), is another natural number and is the set W {W } First suppose W = . Then the rule tells me that the successor is {} which is just {}. Since there isnt anything in W , we dont have to check to see if such a thing has a predecessor. Next suppose that W = {}. This contains only , so we dont have anything to see if it has a predecessor. (It is true that W has a predecessor, but that isnt the point.) Then the successor to W is W {W } which is {, {}} So far so good. Now it follows that if W = {, {}}, then there is a successor to W which is 3 {, {}, {, {}}}
2.1. BASICS
11
You will note that has zero elements, {} has one element,and is the successor of , {, {}} has two elements and is the successor of {}, and the set I have called 3 is the successor of {, {}} and has three elements. I can dene Denition 2.1.6. 0 Denition 2.1.7. 1 {}
Denition 2.1.8. 2 {, {}} I already have a denition of 3, and now you can see why I gave it that name. There is no need to stop there, and the process I have dened will give us a sequence of natural numbers and there is no way to stop it. Already then, I have with my inductive denition of the natural numbers, a way of constructing the natural numbers from pretty much nothing. Actually, from nothing together with the set-builder rule. This idea is due to John von Neumann, one of the most impressive mathematicians of the last century3 . The idea of an inductive denition is that you (a) dene some starting term and (b) dene for any term how to construct the next one. So you can get from your starting term to the one after the starting term, and once you have that you can get the next one, and then the next one, and so on. For ever. It is a process that you can turn on and having turned it on, there is no turning it o. It gives you an innite ladder, with a bottom rung, and for every rung, a higher one. It can take us up to the stars, indeed farther than the farthest star. It is the rst place where innity comes muscling in. It seems at rst quite an innocent little thing, but there are nightmares hiding inside it, multiple innities, each bigger than the last. Innitely bigger. Hide under the bed now, while theres still time. Exercise 2.1.3. What is the succesor to 3? Remark 2.1.1. Some writers start the natural numbers with 1. They are wrong. The thing about the natural numbers that makes them natural is that they are used for counting things. If I ask the question How many purple
The traditional design of computers is called the von Neumann architecture; he wrote the magicent Grundlagen der Quanten-Mekanik, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, still an excellent read with profound ideas in it. He started the application of the Theory of Games to Economics with Morgenstern, and he proved for the rst time that it is possible to build a machine which could replicate itself. Of course bacteria replicate themselves, but von Neumann showed that we didnt need any mysterious life principle to explain this. He also contributed to set theory, concerning which more will be coming later. Altogether, he had a whole lot of fun in his life.
3
12
camels are there in this room? then I expect an answer which is a number. Pretending there is no such number is really, really silly. Of course there is. It is zero. And it is just one less thing than the number of Mike Alders in this room. So of course the counting numbers start with zero and everybody who thinks otherwise has his head up his bum4 . You might be tempted to write N {0, 1, 2, 3, }
and take it that the collection of all the things we can get to from by applying the set builder rule and the inductive denition is also a set. The rst question is what does mean? It clearly has something to do with the inductive process for getting to the next natural number given you have got up to some point; this makes sense and gives us something we might be able to use to dene . We do not, however, as yet have any grounds for thinking that the innite collection of things is actually a set. So we need another rule that says we can have this thing a set too. This is what the axioms of Set Theory are for, to nail everything down. Exercise 2.1.4. Look up the axioms for set theory by some judicious googling. You will nd two main collections, one is called ZF for Zermelo and Fraenkel who came up with them. Another is called NBG which stands, not for No Bloody Good but for von Neumann, Bernays, Gdel who came up with ano other. Yes its still Johnny von Neumann and the same Kurt Gdel who is o responsible for Gdels theorems. You will also nd a version given in the o appendix to Kelleys General Topology, and you might nd Paul Halmos book Naive Set Theory entertaining and possibly helpful. Or possibly not. Do you believe them? What is the dierence between them? Warning, the last question will take a while to answer, and is more of a project than an exercise! Exercise 2.1.5. It now almost makes sense to say when a set is nite and when it isnt; at least it will when we have dened a map and more particularly a bijection. It then makes sense to talk of the cardinality of a set. See how far you can get with this on your own and be careful to dene everything in terms of sets. In Mathematics, its all there is.
No, this is not a valid argument form. In rather inadequate defence, we are arguing about a denition here. Trying to decide when one denition is better than another is not easy and inevitably comes down to time: denitions evolve and the ttest survive. The idea that we should start the natural numbers with one is admittedly more reasonable that wanting them to start with, say, forty-two, but not a lot.
4
2.1. BASICS
13
You can now go home and tell your Mummy and Daddy that you know what the number 2 actually is. Up to this point, you knew it only as a symbol and you know the rules for manipulating it and other symbols. Your distant recollections of primary school may have left you thinking it has something to do with apples. But confront the fact that you have never really known what it actually is, and if a kid brother or sister had asked you what 2 was, youd have had to admit you didnt know5 . I shall now prove that {a, b} = {b, a}. Proposition 2.1.1. For any objects a and b, {a, b} = {b, a}. Proof: a {a, b} and a {b, a}; b {a, b} and b {b, a}. There is nothing else in {a, b}, so everything in {a, b} is in {b, a} so by denition, {a, b} {b, a}. Interchanging the sets in the above argument establishes that {b, a} {a, b}. That is, we have shown that {a, b} {b, a} and {b, a} {a, b}. Hence, {a, b} = {b, a} from the denition of =. A few things should be noticed about this argument. First the layout: I make it clear what it is I am trying to prove by labelling it a proposition. Second I indicate clearly when I am starting my argument, and third I indicate with when I have nished it. Old fashioned people use Q.E.D for this, which stands for Quod erat demonstrandum, that which was to be shown. And nally, the argument itself relies on the denitions of the terms in the proposition and is a sequence of lines, each line being a statement that follows from either the previous line or a block of previous lines. It follows that if you have forgotten the denitions you aint going to be able to prove anything. Also that when you are about to prove something, it is a good idea to look up the denitions of things. In giving proofs, we shall want you to pretty much follow this layout. In this treatment, a proof is a convincing argument. There is actually a whole lot more to it than this, but for the present, thats enough. Note that there is something very human about a proof. Either you buy it or you dont. If you dont, you may be able to point at the bit where it dies, like
It does have something to do with apples, it can be used for counting them. Also sheep, sisters, and other items of negotiable value. In all these cases, the equation 1 + 1 = 2, can be given an interpretation which makes sense and is usually true. On the other hand it fails for rain-drops and is sometimes doubtful with rabbits. Does this mean that arithmetic sometimes stops working?
5
14
identifying a bug in a computer program, or you may be just too damned hazy to say where you dont go along with it. You may sni at it suspiciously and suspect it, or you may nail it as a lie. The line by line structure makes it easy to decide where the bug is. If there is one. Note the absence of bullshit in the above proof. Politicians wouldnt like it a bit. Exercise 2.1.6. Prove that the set of purple camels in this room and the set of two headed students in this room are equal. Does it follow that any two-headed student is a purple camel? Exercise 2.1.7. Provide a scruy argument to show that the set {1 + 1, 2} contains only one element. It will have to be scruy because you dont know what + means. Embarrassing, isnt it? And after all these years... In much of this course, at least the spacy bit, I shall suppose that you know what the set N is (and that it is a set). I shall also suppose that you know what the sets Z, the integers, with (informally) Z = { 3, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3, }, R the real numbers, Q the rational numbers (fractions). You dont actually yet have any sensible idea of what these are, but you can recognise their usual names and you can do sums with them on your calculator. For the present, this will suce, but you ought to ask yourselves what they really are 6 .
2.2
Logic
Denition 2.2.1. A proposition or statement is an assertion which is either true or false. Remark 2.2.1. This also has a certain vagueness. Obviously we are assuming that the proposition is expressed in a language we can understand or it is a meaningless string of symbols or noises, so we have two things, a string of
When I was a schooly, I worried a lot about the real numbers. I had been told they were innite decimal strings which went on forever, a concept which also bugged me. Then how on earth could you add them? If you had two nite strings, you could align them under the decimal point, pad out the shorter one to the right with zeros and then, starting at the right hand end you could add the digits and do the carries until you got to the left hand end. So you could start the addition because there was a right hand end and stop because there was a left hand end. But how could you do it with two innite strings that went on forever? There was nowhere to start. Until you can give a clear and denite answer to how you add up two innite decimal strings, you dont understand the real numbers. Hint: it needs spaciness!
6
2.2. LOGIC
15
symbols and an interpretation. Whatever that means. And what do we mean by true ? Pontius Pilate is said to have asked What is truth? and would not stay for an answer. I suppose he might not have believed any answer he got7 . We shall do what we usually do in ordinary communication and suppose we all have somehow learnt a language and are able to distinguish when a proposition is clearly true or clearly false, and that in a great number of cases we may not be able to tell immediately. The more you look at extremal cases, the more worried you can get about these issues: unnatural philosophers do a lot of this. Is Colourless green ideas sleep furiously a proposition? It has the shape of one, but is clearly dierent from Theres a bear behind you. In the second case we have a fair idea of what to do in order to decide if the statement is true: turn around and look for something furry. In the rst case, we dont have a clue what to do to decide if it is true; it is tempting to dismiss it as meaningless which is to say, not a proposition at all, because there is no procedure for deciding if it is true or false. But it might be claimed that the sentence The moon is made of green cheese would have had a similar status in the time of Socrates. He wouldnt have been able to envisage space ships that went there and astronauts who dug up what turned out not to be green cheese but plain dirt. And if you dene meaning in terms of being able to test propositions, what do you make of the sentence A sentence is meaningless unless it carries with it a procedure for determining its truth. Does it mean anything? The unnatural philosophers have had a eld day with this, not recognising that it is an attempt at a denition, and denitions are rather useful things to have but are not propositions in the sense of the above denition, although they may have the same form. If something is a denition, you dont have to do anything to determine its Truth. It carries what you might call the empty procedure. You can either say that a denition is always true, or that it isnt a proposition but a rule for how to use language, and may or may not be accepted by the community which speaks that language. And the community makes up its collective mind by deciding how useful it is, not how true it is. Mostly, I give you the denitions which the community of mathematicians have agreed are useful. There are also issues with things like 2 > 3 which looks on the face of things to be a statement and moreover one which is in fact false. But how do you know it is false? Are you one who feels that if everybody else says something is false then it jolly well is false? Do we take a vote on whether the Earth
Which is a bit puzzling. Suppose Jesus or someone else had given him an answer. Could he not have asked But how do I know that is true? And if he had, could we have observed that he couldnt have asked the question unless he already knew the answer?
7
16
is at? Are you against 2 > 3 on the basis of evidence or its unpopularity? Anyway, how do you dene 2, 3 and >? Exercise 2.2.1. We have dened 2 and 3, can you make a denition of >? Can you do it in such a way that 2 > 3 is demonstrably false? Hint:You might nd easier to dene rst. Some things appear to be true or false because there is evidence for or against them; e.g. having a bear behind you. Others appear to be true or false by virtue of the denitions of the terms. When I proved {a, b} = {b, a} there was no question of observations, it all hinged on what sets are, and on what =means. And what it means is basically a matter of when you are correct to use it according to the rules we have made up. A mathematical truth is rather a weird sort of thing then, and not much like a physical truth8 . It is a physical truth that if you drop something just above the surface of the earth, it will fall at a pretty much constant acceleration of just under ten metres per second per second. To determine whether this is true you basically need to try it out or, if you are smart, something equivalent to it but more accurate9 . But a mathematical truth such as 1 + 1 = 2 is independent of reality and follows from the denitions of the terms. You should, of course, never have believed that 1 + 1 = 2 without a proof. And apples dont cut it10 . Some people do mathematics because they yearn for certainty. You can be quite certain that 1 + 1 = 2, but only because 1, 2, + and = were dened so it is true. All mathematical truths are like that. I hope nding this out has not spoiled your day. Exercise 2.2.2. Can you dene + for pairs of natural numbers? Can you do it so that 1 + 1 = 2 is something you can prove? Hint: You will need an inductive construction for a + b. by starting with b = 0 = and then saying how to get the result for larger values for b. When you have done this you
Which raises the question, why does Mathematics work ? If it didnt have some connection to reality, who in his right mind would bother with it? And yet if statements in Mathematics are true because we dene things that way, what makes it useful? And Mathematics really is useful or nobody would pay us for doing it. Mind you, they dont pay us very much in actual cash. Of course, they couldnt pay us what we are worth or there wouldnt be any money left over for anyone else. 9 Any suggestions? 10 You were a sweet, innocent, gullible child when they assured you that 1 + 1 = 2. Your reasons for believing it then are truly dreadful. Do you still believe it? Why?
8
2.2. LOGIC
17
will be really sure that 1 + 1 = 2. More to the point, you will see why. You can then tell Mummy and Daddy that today you proved that 1 + 1 = 2. It is worth doing this just to see the looks on their faces. Exercise 2.2.3. Explain to your Mummy and Daddy that you fear that the exam will ask you to prove that 2 + 2 = 4, so you will need extra time in which to do it so as to be fully prepared. And extra funding. Exercise 2.2.4. Howsabout multiplication? Some of these issues are philosophical, and mathematicians do not have a high opinion of philosophers, regarding them as more or less terminally muddled and confused. We are all muddled and confused, it is part of the human condition, but at least mathematicians know we are muddled and confused. And we have worked out ways of getting slightly less muddled and confused. Quite a lot of this last is concerned with constructing precise denitions. I leave you to gure out why this works. Exercise 2.2.5. Why are precise denitions (a) useful for Physicists and Engineers and (b) generally nice things to have? Let us therefore, with acknowledgements that we are slithering over things we do not fully understand, proceed to at least have some relatively precise denitions. Logic comes in two sorts, known as Propositional Calculus and Predicate Calculus.
2.2.1
Propositional Calculus
Propositional Calculus is about propositions or sentences, which you will recall are strings of symbols together with an interpretation so that the sentences mean something and are either True or False. In studying logic we are not concerned with whether a sentence is true or not, or what truth means, but only with what follows from it in terms of the truth of other propositions. Thus the syllogism If God exists and is good then this is the best of all possible worlds This is not the best of all possible worlds Therefore either God is not good or He does not exist. is a valid argument. Whether you believe the conclusion (the last line) will depend on whether you accept both of the two premisses (the rst two
18
lines), but if you do accept them then you must accept the conclusion. The reason you must is not because there is a law saying that people who are illogical should be shot, although it might be a better world if they were, but because this is how language is used. It is what the terms And, If, Then, Or and Not mean, and what they mean is determined by rules of usage which you have mostly managed to work out from samples11 . You can, if you wish, decide to be illogical just like all the people in the arts departments, but although you may feel liberated from the laws of logic, all it means is that you are refusing to use language the way the rest of us do. It would no doubt be liberating to call cats dogs whenever you felt like it, but people would soon afterwards stop listening to anything you said. Likewise, a demonstration that you have failed to infer the rules for using logical terms such as And, If, Or, Not will ensure that nobody pays any attention to your arguments. The form of the above argument is: P AND Q R NOT R Therefore (NOT P) OR (NOT Q) When I describe its form, I simply take each sentence and replace it, consistently, by a symbol. Then some forms of argument are valid and some are not. The word valid is not a term of approval, it just means there is a list of argument forms which are reliable and others which are not, and this is one of those you can trust. Note that a valid argument may have a false conclusion, but only if one or more of the premisses is false. Western Civilisation is remarkable for a number of things: our Science, our Technology and our Mathematics are hugely in advance of that of every other civilisation that this planet has ever seen12 . It is worth pointing out that for over a thousand years, the education system in the West had a strong emphasis on Geometry and Logic. Almost all the Mathematics and the main foundations of Science were developed during a period when schoolies learnt a lot of Logic and Geometry. Logic got lost in the nineteenth century and Geometry was dropped in the 1970s. (And things have been falling around our ears ever since.) In the middle ages, school kids had to learn all the valid forms of argument by memorising them, using Latin verses to do it. Google
A clever trick known as grammatical inference and how people do it is not known. But they do. 12 It is also the most decent and kindly civilisation and the one with most individual freedom. These things may not be unconnected.
11
2.2. LOGIC
19
Barbara Celarent Darii to see how it went. Schoolmasters love turning something with meaning into unintelligible ritual, and they did it with Logic a long time ago; basically they hate teaching anything a bright student can do better than them. While I dont hold with training monkeys to rattle o the valid syllogisms, I think you, as human beings, ought to be able to tell when an argument is valid by looking at it and thinking about it for a bit. Exercise 2.2.6. Satisfy yourself that the above syllogism is in fact valid. If you cant, try some googling and if all else fails ask your lecturer. Exercise 2.2.7. Find another valid syllogism. Try it out on your friends by putting particular sentences in and see if they attack the premisses or the logic. Try it with an invalid argument form leading to a conclusion they like and see if they buy it. Then point out the aw if they do. One can describe the form of a syllogism as a valid rule of inference. The simplest and best known rule of inference is called modus ponens.
Modus Ponens
P PQ Q This means that if P is any sentence which is true, and if the sentence If P is true then Q is true, for any sentence Q, is true, then Q must be true. The symbol is called implies and you need to note that it makes sense between sentences. It is not a fashionable kind of = sign and anybody writing anything where the things on either side are numbers or sets gets an automatic fail. We often rely on Logic and leave out half of what is strictly necessary, relying on the audience to ll in the gaps. In the following I have put the suppressed bits in parentheses. This is nearly all of it: Example 2.2.1. (Something can go wrong) If something can go wrong it will (go wrong) (Therefore something will go wrong) Observe that this is another example of Modus Ponens. The fact that most of you can ll in the gaps with high reliability tells us that somehow you have picked up one of the rules of Logic.
20
A variant of Modus Ponens(called in some quarters Modus Morons) goes:
Modus Morons An invalid but popular rule of inference:

Q PQ P As an example I shall prove that I am the pope. Since I am not the pope, you may safely conclude that Modus Morons is not a valid rule of inference! The pope is infallible when pronouncing on matters of faith and morals. If I am the pope I pronounce that all matters are matters of faith and morals. If I am the pope I further pronounce that it is not raining in the classroom. It is not raining in the classroom. Therefore I am the pope. The rst four lines are perfectly sound. If you are a catholic, you will know that the pope was declared infallible sometime early in the twentieth century or late in the nineteenth, I am not sure of the date. Anyway, if you are a catholic you are required to believe the rst line. And lets all see what it feels like to be a catholic for a few minutes. It follows that if P is the statement I am the pope and if you accept the rst line then it follows that the second statement is true because it is clearly a matter of faith and morals because it says something about faith and morals, namely that they encompass everything. In which case it follows that if I am the pope then my pronouncement Q on it not raining in the classroom must be true. This is all perfectly sound for catholics. The catch is in the last line which follows from the rest by Modus Morons which is not in fact valid. So not even catholics have to believe it. This might sound as if it is of little practical concern, but two thirds of the rst year students one year relied on Modus Morons in induction proofs. Consequently they got zero marks for their assignments and the relevant examination question. Make sure you dont imitate them. Two common forms of argument which are extremely popular but invalid are the following. First the argumentam de auctoritas or argument from authority. This has the form:
2.2. LOGIC IF A is an authority THEN any assertion of A is true A is an authority A asserts P Therefore P (is true)
21
Related to this is the Argumentam ad Hominem (argument to the man) which goes If A is stupid/evil/ugly then any assertion of A is False A is stupid/evil/ugly A asserts P Therefore P is False For example: George Bush is stupid and wicked George Bush thought the War in Iraq was a good idea Therefore the war in Iraq was a bad idea Now whether the war in Iraq is a good idea or a bad one is not established by this argument. We can show this by replacing the war in Iraq was a good idea by eating food is a good idea. Even if George Bush is stupid and wicked, he may be right about some things. This argument form is hopelessly invalid but immensely popular as reading comments on Blog sites makes very clear. I have to admit that the argument: Anyone who thinks the natural numbers start with one has his head up his bum (Therefore the natural numbers start with zero.) is also invalid. It is a variant of the ad hominem 13 . The standard training in Logic for about a thousand years required the student to take an argument and reduce it to syllogistic form by breaking it up into separate assertions joined by logical connectives (and, or, implies) and inserting suppressed premisses where necessary. I give an example of this process; the suppressed premisses are indicated by parentheses. Note that this can be done in many ways. The text of the argument was extracted from a letter to The Australian Newspaper. Example 2.2.2. K Lynch believes that Angela Shanahan is wicked because she would not use therapy with embryonic stem cells to save the life of her child on the grounds that the embryos were going to destruction anyway.
13
I told you it was popular.
22
Using the same moral criterion, the sacrice of Jews by Dr. Mengele to develop life saving therapies was justied since the Jews were going to destruction anyway. Analysis Argument A for any x, x is going to be detroyed anyway using x to save lives is morally justied. Argument A Dr Mengele was morally justied to use Jews to save lives. (Dr. Mengele was not morally justied to use Jews to save lives.) (Therefore Argument A is not sound.) (K Lynch believes Argument A is sound.) (Therefore K Lynch has a false belief.) Exercise 2.2.8. Does this argument establish that Angela Shanahan is not wicked? Exercise 2.2.9. If you were K Lynch, how would you respond to this? Exercise 2.2.10. Turn the argument anyone who believes the natural numbers start with one has his head up his bum, therefore the natural numbers start with zero into syllogistic form. Exercise 2.2.11. Go to Andrew Bolts Blogsite http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/ and copy out any one of his postings. Id choose a short one if I were you. What claim is he making exactly? What arguments does he provide? Go through inserting suppressed premisses, any suppressed conclusion and other logically necessary statements so that the argument is in fact valid. You should ensure that the resulting argument is logically sound whether you believe the conclusion or not. If there are many possible suppressed premisses, choose one which looks likely to be acceptable to Andrew Bolt. If possible. Be as generous as you can manage, particularly if you disagree with him. Warning: this can take a while. On the other hand it is quite instructive. The Jesuits used to train their members by requiring them to take apart a Times leader in this way. There are several ways of joining up sentences into compound sentences: we have already seen one with P Q but I could also have written P & Q to mean P and Q (are both true) or P Q to mean that either P is true or Q is true. I can also, for any sentence P obtain the denial of P which is written P or P . Thus if P is true, P is false and vice versa, and if P is false, P is true and vice versa.
2.2. LOGIC
23
Some of you who are doing Computer Science will have met these before or will shortly. Exercise 2.2.12. The de Morgan Laws are two in number and assert: For any sentences P and Q, (P & Q) = (P ) (Q) (P Q) = (P ) & (Q) To declare that two propositions are equal is to mean that whenever one is true so is the other. Take some examples of particular P and Q and check that the laws hold. Exercise 2.2.13. The Truth Table for & is as follows: P T T F F Q T F T F & T F F F
This gives every possible combination of cases of the truth values of P and Q and in the nal column gives the truth value of P & Q. Draw up a Truth table for or and one for . If you have trouble with the last, there is a denition of which goes: P Q = (P Fill in all four rows of the table: P ? Q ? Q (P ? & ? Q) (P & ? Q) & Q)
Exercise 2.2.14. Prove the deMorgan Laws using Truth Tables. Exercise 2.2.15. A compound proposition is called a tautology when the truth table entries for it are all True. The de Morgan laws give two such tautologies. Perhaps the simplest tautology is P P which clearly has value True whether P is true or False. Find a tautology involving three propositions P, Q and R and conrm that it is one. It should have eight rows in the Truth Table.
24
Remark 2.2.2. Note that tautologies appear to be true statements but dont actually say anything about the world at all. They are true in the most boring possible way, they are, in eect, statements about how language is correctly used. Note from the truth table for the implication that if P is false, then P Q is true for any Q. This puzzles people. But consider: if I tell you: If it rains I shall go to the cinema Let P be It rains today and Q be I shall go to the cinema today. Then we can probably agree that my claim is equivalent to asserting that P Q. If it rains and I go to the cinema then I have told the truth. If it rains and I dont go to the cinema I have told a lie. If it doesnt rain and I go to the beach and dont go even near a cinema then again I have told the truth. But if it doesnt rain and I go and see Avatar anyway, then I certainly havent lied, so I must have told the truth. If you thought I meant that I would go to the cinema if and only if it rained, well, thats your problem. It isnt what I said. Exercise 2.2.16. On the basis of the four cases, write out the truth table for and check to see if it agrees with the one you did earlier. This fact that a false statement can imply anything was doubted by a member of the audience in a public talk by Bertrand Russell who showed, in reply, that if zero is equal to one, then he was the pope. I shall give a variant which is much more frightful. Proposition 2.2.1. 0 = 1 You will all burn in hell forever. Proof: 0 = 1 1 = 2 (add one to both sides). The set consisting of {God Almighty, Mike Alder} has two elements. Since 2 = 1, the set {God Almighty, Mike Alder} has one element. This means that God Almighty and Mike Alder must be dierent names for the same thing. God Almighty always tells the truth. (Aquinas, et al ) Hence Mike Alder always tells the truth. Mike Alder now announces that you will all burn in Hell forever. Therefore you will all burn in hell forever. When I gave this argument once to some rst year students, there were cries from the back of the class Blasphemy! and Kill the indel dog!. And those
2.2. LOGIC
25
were the Christians. When I asked why they were upset, they accused me of claiming to be God. But I didnt. I argued that IF 0 = 1 THEN I am God. This is a very dierent kind of claim. I believe the argument provided is, with some minor quibbles, basically correct. But I certainly dont believe that I am God. Partly because I dont believe 0 = 1, but also for lots of other reasons. Of course, with a slight variation I could have proved 0 = 1 implies I am Satan, which most people think a lot more likely. Exercise 2.2.17. If you draw up a truth table for (((P &Q) R) & R) (P Q)
you will discover that under the second it is a column of T s and is hence true no matter what the values of P, Q, R. Check this. This is true of any valid syllogism. Conrm this by verifying that (P & P Q) Q
also has every term under the last a T . Explain how this is a legitimate test to see if a syllogism is valid. Note how I have turned Modus Ponens from being a rule of inference into a logical proposition. We have then the claim that all valid argument forms when turned into logical propositional forms are tautologies. Explain why this looks right.
2.2.2
Predicate Calculus
The second level of Logic, the Predicate Calculus, deals with things called predicates or open sentences. These are generalisations of sentences, having one (or more) special symbols called placeholders in them. There has been a tendency to use the letters at the tail end of the alphabet for these; it might seem more sensible to use something like or an empty box, but it will turn out we would need a lot of dierent shaped boxes. Placeholders are allowed to be lled in with the names of things in some set or another, whereupon the expression is a proposition. We then talk about a predicate over the set. Example 2.2.3. x > 3 is a predicate over the natural numbers. This means that you are allowed to substitute the name of any natural number for the symbol x and the result is a proposition or sentence. If you substitute 1 for x the sentence is false and if you substitute 4 for x you get a true sentence. The last example might also be a predicate over Z or Q or R. Usually the context tells you which is intended, but it is considered good manners to tell people if there is any chance of uncertainty.
26
Example 2.2.4. x is more than two metres tall is a predicate over the set of people in this room. There are two ways of turning a predicate into a sentence, the rst is to substitute some allowable value, the name of an element of the set for which the predicate is dened, and the second is to use one of two quantiers. The rst is the universal quantier which puts For every x in the set, in front of the predicate P (x). We write this: x S, P (x)
where S is the set of possible names of things for which P (x) makes sense. Example 2.2.5. For every x in this room, x is more than two metres tall. This translates as everybody in this room is more than two metres tall. It is a perfectly respectable proposition, it just happens to be false. The second is the existential quantier which puts there exists an x such that in front of the predicate P (x). We write this: x S, P (x)
Example 2.2.6. There exists an x in this room such that x is more than two metres tall. This is usually translated as Somebody in this room is more than two metres tall. I dont know if this is true or not. What is clear is that it either is or isnt. Example 2.2.7. x N, x > 3 This says that there is at least one natural number bigger than three. It is a true statement. You can see that the sign also makes sense when it is used between predicates. Example 2.2.8. x Z, x > 5 x > 3 in this case it is the implication which is being quantied, and the result is a true statement. It should be obvious to you after a few moments though that you can have two placeholders in a predicate and you can quantify over both. Example 2.2.9. x Z, y Z, x < y This says that for every integer there is at least one which is bigger, which is true. Note that reversing the order of the quantiers changes everything: y Z, x Z, x < y
2.2. LOGIC
27
says that there is some integer which is bigger than every integer (including itself ). This is false. So make sure your expression says what you intend it to! Human beings are extremely good at working out rules of how to use language from quite small samples14 . They work them out in the sense of being able to use them, but not, usually, in the sense of being able to state what they are. About two and a half thousand years ago, Aristotle worked out the rules of Logic and wrote them down, and for about a thousand years, Logic was in the school syllabus for all educated Europeans. It was believed that knowing the rules of Logic sharpened your thinking and made it easy to deal with quite complicated arguments. Certainly this was before the age of ubiquitous bullshit in which we now live, so there may be something in the idea. Since you have absorbed through your skins the correct way to use Logic in easy cases, at least I hope so, and since we do not want to turn you into Logicians, merely sharpen you capacity for logical thought, I shall stop here. Anybody interested will nd books on Logic in the Library. Anybody with an interest in Computer Science will nd it useful to be familiar with the elements of classical or Aristotelian Logic. There are a number of generalisations that have been devised in modern times (since about 1920) some of which have a bearing on computing, for example Temporal Logic. Modal Logic tries to have dierent meanings for quantication to try to capture the ideas of possibility and necessity. Other Logics have looked at what you can do if you allow more than just two values of TRUE and FALSE, something which you should be warned Mathematica does without telling you: it has a thing called a placeholder into which you may put numbers and the question of whether the thing is just a placeholder or a number in that place would seem to have an answer either yes or no. If P is the statement X is a placeholder then youd expect P to be True if it was, and False if it isnt. But although P is true if X is a placeholder, it isnt false if X is a number. It comes out with a sort of buggered if I know, a third logical value. They try to x this up with a TrueQ function, but this means you can have both a statement and its negation false. We conclude that the programmers who wrote Mathematica are not much good at Logic. Or have gone o and invented a new three-valued Logic without telling us15 . Multi-valued logics were invented (by Emil Post and others) around the
This is grammatical inference again. If I sound peeved its because I am. This ghastly mess caused me a lot of trouble over the vacation when I was doing some research which required me to write some programs in Mathematica.
15 14
28
1920s: an important case being the probabilistic logic where you allow all the numbers between 0 and 1 as possible values, 0 being FALSE and 1 being TRUE, and a number like 0.5 being a reasonable value for the truth value of When I toss this coin it will come down Heads. This interpretation of Probability is due to John Maynard Keynes16 , usually better known for his Economic theories. Nowadays we call the people who interpret probability as a continuous valued Logic Bayesians, and it is quite popular with Physicists. I mention these things because they might amuse as well as instruct.
2.3
More about Sets
We use predicates over sets to dene subsets. The subset is called the truth set of the predicate17 . Example 2.3.1. Z+ {z Z : z > 0} This is read: Z plus is dened to be the set of those integers z which are greater than zero. Example 2.3.2. A {x R : 1 < x 3}. You may nd that this set is described by (1, 3] in Calculus. Some people use | where I use : , read as such that. (The top dot is such and the bottom dot is that.) I nd the | symbol gets hard to read when it is used in predicates with a modulus sign in, ({x R | x 1 < 0}) and my handwriting is bad enough as it is. You can use whichever you like. Recall that I dened equality for sets. A slightly dierent form is: Denition 2.3.1. Two sets A and B are equal if they contain the same elements, that is every element of A is also in B and every element of B is also in A.
Keynes wrote both his Treatise on Probability and his General Theory while a Fellow at Kings College Cambridge. He spent his spare time seducing undergraduates, all male in those days. I am told that this tradition is still maintained at Kings College. On the other hand, it is also said that Kings College has more Nobel prizes than France, although the food isnt as good. If you ever contemplate doing postgraduate work in Cambridge, both of these remarks could be useful to you. 17 This idea is due to Aristotle who used it to dene the species man as a featherless biped. That is to say, H = {x B : F (x)} where H is the set of human beings, B is the set of bipeds, and F (x) is the predicate x has feathers. Remember this the next time you see a plucked chicken.
16
2.3. MORE ABOUT SETS I shall write this more algebraically as A=B i x, x A x B and x, x B x A
29
the expression i is short for if and only if and is sometimes replaced by the double implication symbol . Observe that we can claim two dierent denitions are equivalent if whenever something satises the rst it also satises the second, and vice versa. Exercise 2.3.1. Show the denitions of equality for sets are equivalent. Note that I havent told you what set the predicate x A is dened over. What possible values are there for x? In such cases we rather suppose that there is a universe of discourse containing every conceivable thing we might want to talk about. If we call this U (for Universe) then it contains x and perhaps also A and B and we could regard it as containing all possible sets, so everything is in it. There is a bit of a problem with this which I shall come back to. If I leave out the name of the set for my predicate, assume that it is some suciently big set for the predicate to make sense which will contain everything we might want it to. Note that we usually list each element in a set only once but if we repeat the same element it doesnt change the set. Also the order in which we list elements of sets does not matter, as sets are only characterised by which elements they contain. Hence {1, 2} = {2, 1}, since both sets contain the elements 1 and 2. Also, the set {2, 1 + 1, 2 + 0} is equal to the set {2} which has only one thing in it. I relied on this in my argument to show that if 0 = 1 then you will all burn in Hell forever. I could dene the empty set as {x : x = x}
Since any x is the name of something, it must surely be the case that the thing is itself, whatever it is. So the predicate x = x isnt true no matter which x you plug in. We can now show that the set of purple camels in this room is the empty set: I claim the statement There exists a purple camel in this room is false. If you dispute this you can prove me wrong by pointing to a purple camel. Nobody did so my claim stands. It follows that if P (x) is short for x is a purple camel in this room I am claiming that x P (x) is false. Hence xP (x) is true. Hence A {x : P (x)} = . To show from the denition that A = what I have to prove is
30
that for every x, x A x and also x, x x A. This is very easy because there aint no such x. Exercise 2.3.2. Convince yourself by looking at examples that ( x S, is always true. Exercise 2.3.3. The above is a generalisation of one of the deMorgan Laws. Which one? What do you get if you generalise the other? The same argument shows that the set B of two headed students in this class is also the empty set. I can also establish the truth of the sentence If a student in this room has two heads then he or she is a purple camel. Such statements are said to be vacuously true and it is a good description. This would all be rather silly (although harmless fun) were it not for the fact that mathematics also uses vacuously true statements on occasion. Recall an earlier denition I want to extend a bit: Denition 2.3.2. Let A be a set. The set B is called a subset of A if every element of B is in A. We use the notation B A. If B A and B = A and B = then we say B is a proper subset of A and we write B A. Be warned that some writers allow as a proper subset of eveything except itself. This is annoying, but there isnt much I can do about it. Formally we write: B A i x, x B x A Remark 2.3.1. The above denition uses the expression Let A be a set. This is slightly weird but is widely used. What one really should say is something like There is a set which I shall call A, or more likely For any set you like, which I shall call A for present purposes,... But nobody has the patience. You should also note that the above formal denition is a predicate with two placeholders A and B. Since we want the denition to be a true statement, there is an implied universal quantication in there. Unfortunately there is a lot of universal quantication which gets left out and you are supposed to put it in. If S is the collection of all possible sets, and if U is the universe of discourse, then we should really write: A S,B S B A i x U , x B x A P (x)) = x S, P (x)
2.3. MORE ABOUT SETS
31
This has ensured we have no unquantied variables (placeholders) left, so it is a proposition and one which is in fact a denition. We could argue that S U so we dont need S in the above and could replace it with U . There is a big problem with doing this. It draws your attention to the collection of all possible sets, and you may reasonably think that S or U is itself a set. Moreover a set which contains itself as an element. Sets which contain themselves as subsets are one thing, and we meet them all the time, because they all do, even the empty set, but a set which contains itself as an element is denitely weird. But not impossible on the face of things: The set of short English phrases would seem to be a reasonably well dened set. And it contains The set of short English phrases. This leads us to brood over the subset of S or U of those sets which contain themselves (as elements) and another subset those which do not.
2.3.1
Aside: Russells Paradox
I shall use R to denote the set of those sets which do not contain themselves as elements. Then I ask the innocent seeming question, does R contain itself or not? We ought, being clear thinking adults, to be able to decide this by a little careful analysis. Suppose R does contain itself, that is, R R. But R is, by denition, the collection of all those sets which do not contain themselves, so it damn well shouldnt be there. So we deduce that RR But if RR it follows that R is a set which does not contain itself, so it denitely belongs in R and must be there after all. If your head is not spinning a bit then you havent understood the whole idea. I have used R to denote this impossible set after Bertrand Russell who invented it. What it shows is that going around turning anything you fancy into a set is fraught with logical paradox. This threw Mathematics into a nasty spin for a while in the early years of the last century. Russell sent a letter to Gotlobb Frege, a mathematician who had just nished proof reading a book which put all of mathematics on a sound
32
footing of set theory (he thought) when he got Russells letter which started o Dear Frege, Consider the set of all sets which do not contain themselves . . . It came as a bit of a shock, because his lifes work had suddenly had the bottom shot out of it. We have since found ways of avoiding Russells Paradox, and they involve saying that S is not a set. It is something altogether bigger and hairier. You can do a Google search on Russells Paradox and nd out all about it. It turns out to have a bearing on some results of Kurt Gdel about what o can and cant be proved in Mathematics. Google also Godels Theorem for some innocent entertainment. Some fruitloops have claimed that Gdels o Theorem proves that people are not robots which happen to be made of meat instead of silicon and steel. This shows that fruitloops should stay away from mathematics. Of course you are all meat machines. Modern medicine relies upon the fact. You are allowed to argue with me about this, indeed encouraged to (see the Preface), but only after you have understood Gdels Theorem. o
2.3.2
The Algebra of Sets
Now we return to the business of saying some conventional things about sets and we shall use the nasty sloppy convention of letting things be things, without asking whether they want to be them or not, and avoid proper formal quantication so as to slither around dicult problems in metamathematics. I start by repeating some denitions in case you have forgotten them: Denition 2.3.3. For any sets A and B, the intersection of A and B, denoted by A B is dened to be the set AB {x : x A and x B}
The union of A and B denoted A B, is dened to be the set AB {x : x A or x B}
Example 2.3.3. Let A = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, . . .} be the set of all natural numbers and B = {x Z : x2 = 4}. Then B = {2, 2} and so A B = {2, 0, 1, 2, 3, . . .} and A B = {2}. Example 2.3.4. Let A denote the set of human beings in this room, B (for Blokes) denote the subset of male human beings in this room, and S (for Sheilas) denote the female human beings in this room. Then B S = A and B S = unless we have a hermaphrodite or two.
33
In the Algebra of Sets we perform operations on sets using and as our operations (similar to how we use addition and multiplication for numbers). We use parentheses to indicate precedence. Theorem 2.3.1. For any sets A, B, C, 1. Commutativity: (a) A B = B A, (b) A B = B A, 2. Associativity: (a) (A B) C = A (B C), (b) (A B) C = A (B C), 3. Distributivity: (a) (A B) C = (A C) (B C), (b) (A B) C = (A C) (B C). Remark 2.3.2. Proving these claims is very easy and follows from corresponding statements about Logic: if for example I use P & Q to mean P and Q for any propositions P, Q, then (P & Q) & R = P & (Q & R) both meaning the claim that all three propositions are true. Likewise if P Q means P or Q, it is easy to see that (P & Q) R = (P R) & (Q R) The left hand side means that to say that both Pand Q are true or R is true, is the same as saying that either P is true or R is true and also either Q is true or R is true. I hope you can convince yourself of the corresponding Logical statements by thinking about what they mean. Exercise 2.3.4. Prove the above statements using truth tables. Now x (A B) C i x A B or x C i (x A & x B) x C and the rest is logic. Which I have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that you can all do. Denition 2.3.4. Two sets A and B are called disjoint i A B = .
34
2.3.3
Set Dierences
Denition 2.3.5. For two sets A and B the set dierence A\B is the set of all elements of A which are not in B. Another way of expressing this is: A\B or as x A\B x A and x B The set A\B is sometimes called the complement of B in A. Example 2.3.5. Let A = {1, 5, 7, 9} and B = {2, 3, 5, 9}. Then A\B = {1, 7}. {x : x A and x B}
2.3.4
Cartesian Products of Sets
Consider the real plane. We often describe points in the plane through their coordinates, e.g. (1, 2) or (1, 17), when it becomes R2 . In this case we distinguish the points (1, 2) and (2, 1). Hence (1, 2) is not the same as the set {1, 2}. We call (x, y) an ordered pair. We say that two ordered pairs (x, y) and (s, t) are equal if x = s and y = t and unequal otherwise. For example (1, 2) = (2, 1) and also (1, 2) = (1, 3). Remark 2.3.3. This raises (not begs)18 the question of how exactly we dene an ordered pair in terms of sets and nothing else: a certain degree of scruness appears to be threatening here. We can dene the ordered pair (a, b) as the set {a, {a, b}}. This makes it clear that there is a pair of things and a single thing which is in the pair. Then if the sets {x, {x, y}} and {a, {a, b}} are equal, we must have that everything in one is in the other, and we could not have x = {a, b} and {x, y} = a since this would make {x, y} = {{a, b}, y} = a. This doesnt seem the sort of thing we want an honest god-fearing well behaved set to do and we therefore have an axiom of set theory to exclude it. This forces us to conclude that it must be the case that a = x and {a, b} = {x, y} which forces b = y. Which is what we want. In the ordered pair (x, y) we call x the rst component and y the second component.
Google begging the question. Nearly all journos screw up on this and misuse the term. I guess they think it is a posh way of saying that something raises a question and it doesnt mean it at all.
18
35
Denition 2.3.6. Let A and B be sets. Then the Cartesian product of A and B is A B = {(a, b) : a A, b B} We can generalise this to n sets. Denition 2.3.7. Let n be a positive integer and A1 , . . . , An sets. Then A1 An = {(a1 , . . . , an ) : ai Ai } is the Cartesian product of A1 , . . . , An . We denote A A by An when there are n terms in the product. Hence Rn in the particular case A = R. Exercise 2.3.5. What is the result if one or more of the Ai = ? Exercise 2.3.6. Dene the cartesian product of a nite number of sets inductively in terms of sets rather than ordered pairs. Exercise 2.3.7. (Hard one, project style problem) Find out precisely what axioms of set theory are necessary to establish the proper denition of an ordered pair.
2.3.5
Sets of Sets
Sometimes, as discussed earlier, we have to consider sets whose elements are sets. In this case we have to be quite careful. Suppose that S is a set whose elements are sets. For example, S = {A, B, C}. Then if x A it does not mean that x S. The elements of S are sets and x might not be a set. We distinguish carefully between x and {x}, the former is some entity which might or might not be a set, while the second is a set with one element in it. Confusing and is the sign of a disordered mind. Denition 2.3.8. Let A be a set. The power set of A is the the set of all subsets of A. It is denoted P(A) Exercise 2.3.8. Show that if the set A is nite and has n elements, P(A) is also nite and has 2n elements. Remark 2.3.4. Since I havent dened the term nite you will have to produce an intuitively convincing argument rather than a proper proof, but using the school ideas will suce for the present. Suppose we have a collection of sets Uj , one such for every j J where J is another set called the index set. So far we have dealt with the case where J has only two or at most a nite collection of elements. There is no particular reason for continuing with this restriction.
36
Denition 2.3.9. If Uj , j J is any collection of sets, Uj

jJ
is a set and
x
jJ
Uj
i j J
x Uj
Exercise 2.3.9. translate into English! Exercise 2.3.10. What is

jJ
Uj when J = ?
Denition 2.3.10. If Uj , j J is any collection of sets, Uj

jJ
is a set and
x
jJ
Uj
i j J
x Uj
Exercise 2.3.11. translate this into English! Exercise 2.3.12. What is

jJ
Uj when J = ?
There is a denition of a cartesian product over any set which is rather more technical and which we shant need.
2.4
Relations
Suppose a Little Green Man from outer space came down and discovered that two people were married and asked what it meant to be married. Since being married means dierent things to dierent people we would have a denite problem. The LGM, we may suppose, knows almost nothing but can distinguish between dierent species and has worked out how to tell a plant from an animal and a male animal from a female animal, at least most of the time. The mathematicians answer to the question would be to say that being married is a relation between human beings. This precludes being married to your pet hamster19 . The relation has a number of properties: for a start if a human being x is married to another y then it is also true that y is married to x. It is tempting to write M (x, y) as shorthand for x is married to y so we can tell the LGM that x, y H,
19
M (x, y) M (y, x)
Although a bloke in Russia wrote to Mr. Putin asking if he could marry his cow. It seems hed had had a long and intimate relationship with the animal and wanted to regularise things.
2.4. RELATIONS where H denotes the set of human beings. It is illegal to marry yourself20 , so we can assure the LGM that x H, M (x, x)
37
After that it gets dicult. Should we tell the LGM that male human beings (x HM ) can marry only female human beings (y HF )? Not in Canada. Should we tell it that a man can be married to only one woman? Not in Saudi Arabia. Should we say that a man can be married to someone above a denite age? In some cultures at some times it has been possible to marry children or an adult to a child. And anyway, could you keep on specifying enough rules to do the job? Some cultures insist on the local priest or shaman ociating, others require only a declaration to each other by the parties concerned. Jumping over a sword or a broomstick worked in the middle ages. And most poor people didnt care anyway. So you all have illegitimate greatn grandparents for some n N. The mathematicians way is to specify the set of people concerned and then give a list of who is married to whom. It might be a longish list but this would do it, although the list would change in time. Of course we still have to have some way of deciding if people are married when drawing up the list, but at least we could ask them. In this case we have that being married would be a subset of H H, the cartesian product of the set of all human beings with itself. We write M H H is the set of married people and write (x, y) M instead of M (x, y). In general, we have: Denition 2.4.1. A binary relation R between sets A and B is a subset, R A B. We can dene a ternary relation (x gave y to z) on three sets in the same way. I shant bother much with n-ary relations for n > 2. Example 2.4.1. < is a binary relation on R (that is a relation between R and R) given by (x, y) < z R+ , y =x+z
We write x < y instead of (x, y) < and if R is a binary relation I shall generally write xRy as shorthand for (x, y) R. Example 2.4.2. Let R denote the relation of owning something, a relation human beings take seriously. It is going to be a subset of A B where A is
20
Which is a pity, since there would seem to be considerable tax advantages.
38
the set of possible owners and B is the set of things that can be owned. If we decide that a company can own things, then A will have to be the union of a set of human beings and a set of other things including companies. If joint ownership is allowed, then we might have to allow A to include P(H), the set of all subsets of human beings. This would include companies. Does a dog own its bone or a bird its nest? If so, dogs and birds would have to be in A as well. Can you own only material objects, or could you own a promise to buy your shares in Oil at some future date for a xed price? Economists think you can. So the set B is going to take some careful thought too. Can you both own some things and be owned by others? In Roman times a slave was owned and could also own things. There have been cases of slaves who owned more money than their masters. Does your pet cat own you? The cat might think so. Working out what ownership actually means is very tricky. Better to turn back to mathematics where we always have precise denitions to work with. Example 2.4.3. We use the notation M2,2 (R) to denote the set of 2 2 matrices with real entries. For any A, B M2,2 (R) write ARB i there is a sequence of elementary row operations that can convert A to B. Then R is a binary relation on M2,2 (R). We shall say that A and B are ERO equivalent when ARB. It is immediate that A M2,2 (R), ARA (Just do any ERO and then undo it the next time. Or add zero times one row to another.) It is immediate that A, B M2,2 (R), and also that A, B, C M2,2 (R), ARB & BRC ARC ARB BRA
There are many other relations which share these properties. For example, the relation = on the set N satises the conditions in an admittedly uninteresting way since numbers are equal only to themselves.
2.4.1
Equivalence Relations and Partitions
The denition of a relation is too general (just think of any subset of A A). Some special relations are particularly useful and we will discuss a few below.
2.4. RELATIONS
39
Denition 2.4.2. Let A be any set and a relation on the set A. that is, A A. (i) is called reexive i x A, xx
That is, if the subset {(x, x) : x A} . (ii) is called symmetric i x, y A, xyyx
That is, if the whenever (x, y) , then (y, x) . (iii) is called transitive i x, y, z A, xy & yzxz
That is, if (x, y), (y, z) , then (x, z) Denition 2.4.3. An equivalence relation on a set A is a binary relation which is reexive, symmetric and transitive that is, it satises all the three conditions in the last denition. Exercise 2.4.1. Show that = is an equivalence relation on N, (that is where the word equivalence comes in!) and that > is not an equivalence relation on N. It is very easy to construct an equivalence relation on small sets. Suppose we have a set C of cows in a eld. I want to construct an equivalence relation on the set C. I can do this by herding the cows into clusters, one in the north corner, one in the east, one in the south and a fth cluster in the middle. I show a picture of the ve clusters of cows in gure 2.1 with them all neatly separated by fences. Now I dene an equivalence by: cow x is equivalent to cow y i the two cows are in the same cluster. It is easy to see that the relation is reexive since each cow is in the same cluster as itself, it is symmetric because if x and y are in the same cluster then so are y and x. And it is transitive because x y and z are all cows together in the same cluster. This works for other things besides cows. In fact it works for everything. We now make this claim precise:
40
Figure 2.1: An equivalence on cows. Denition 2.4.4. A partition of a set A is a set P of non-empty subsets of A such that x A, x belongs to one and only one member of P. In the cow example, the partition elements are the clusters of cows. There are ve of them, so P is a set with ve elements. For another example, consider the even and odd positive integers this is a partition of the positive integers into two subsets. Denition 2.4.5. Let A be any set and an equivalence relation on A. For any x A, dene Ex {y A : x y}. The set Ex is called the equivalence class of x with respect to the equivalence relation . REMARKS (a) Observe that x Ex , since x x. (b) x y if and only if Ex = Ey . Proof: Suppose x y and a Ex . Then a x y and by transitivity a y and therefore a Ey . Hence every element of Ex is in Ey . On the other hand if b Ey then b y x and so b Ex and therefore Ex = Ey . If Ex = Ey then x Ey and so x y. (c) Let P = {Ex : x A}. Then P is a partition of A. First it is clear the Ex A. Also, Ex = Ey or Ex Ey = . Proof: Suppose Ex Ey = . Then there exist an element a Ex Ey , so a x and a y. By transitivity, x y and by (b) Ex = Ey . (d) Let P be any partition of A. Dene the relation R on A as follows: (x, y) R if and only if x and y lie in the same element of P. Then R is an equivalence relation on A. Hence we have proved
2.4. RELATIONS
41
Theorem 2.4.1. Let A be any non-empty set. Then the equivalence classes of an equivalence relation partition A. Moreover, any partition denes an equivalence relation on A whose equivalence classes are the elements of the partition. Exercise 2.4.2. We put an equivalence relation on R2 . x1 y1 , x2 y2 R2 , x1 y1 x2 y2 x1 = x2
Verify that this is an equivalence relation on R2 and describe the equivalence classes. Exercise 2.4.3. How many distinct relations are there on a set with three elements? How many of them are equivalence relations? With four elements? Exercise 2.4.4. On a set with thre elements, dene some equivalence reslations. Now dene an equivalence relation on the equivalence relations.
2.4.2
Maps
Maps or functions are a special case of a binary relation between (generally dierent) sets X and Y . We use them extensively to represent input-output systems, of which there are rather a lot, for example rotations and moving objects. In the last case, the input is the time and the output is where the object is at that time. For any binary relation R A B, we have a set of ordered pairs which is R. Denition 2.4.6. For any binary relation R A B, the domain of R, written dom(R) is dened by: dom(R) {a A : b B, (a, b) R} Denition 2.4.7. For any binary relation R, between A and B, the codomain is B. This is sometimes called the range of R. Denition 2.4.8. For any binary relation R A B, the image of R, written im(R) is dened by: im(R) {b B : a A (a, b) R} Exercise 2.4.5. Let R be the relation < on R. Give the domain and image of R. Exercise 2.4.6. Let R denote the relation on the cows of the last section. Give the domain and range of the relation R.
42
Denition 2.4.9. If R is a binary relation between A and B (that is, R A B) then R1 is the inverse relation between B and A given by (b, a) R1 (a, b) R
Remark 2.4.1. The inverse relation is always dened. Exercise 2.4.7. The relation square from R to R consists of all pairs (x, x2 ), x R. Give the inverse relation. Denition 2.4.10. A relation f between sets X and Y is a map i 1. dom(f ) = X 2. x X, y, z Y (x, y) f & (x, z) f y=z
Exercise 2.4.8. Translate the above into English and construct some examples of relations which are not maps and others which are when X is the set {u,v,w} and Y is the set {a,b,c,d,e} We write a map f between X and Y as f : X Y , or to be really trendy f as X Y , and when (x, y) f we write f (x) = y. We may write the pair of lines: f :X Y x y to say that f is a map and f (x) = y. We talk informally of f taking x to y. We also draw a picture like gure 2.2 to provide us with a picture of the kind of things maps are. The image of f in gure 2.2 is shown on the codomain. Informally, a map from X to Y is a set of inputs, X, and a set of outputs which are in Y but need not be all of it, and each input has precisely one output. Example 2.4.4. f (x) = x2 is a map from R to R. So are most of the other functions you have met. The inverse relation f 1 is not a map as you should have established. Remark 2.4.2. Some people call what I have called maps functions or mappings. The terms transformation and operator are also used. The reason for the muddle is that the idea kept coming up in dierent contexts and people needed a name for it and were too thick to notice it had been done before.
2.4. RELATIONS
43
f x
Y > y >
Figure 2.2: A picture of a map. Denition 2.4.11. Two maps f : A B and g : C D are equal if 1. they have the same domain (A = C) 2. they have the same codomain (B = D) 3. for all a A, f (a) = g(a)
Sometimes we weaken the second condition to insist only that the image of f is the same as the image of g and both are contained in B and in D. The word range is sometimes used to mean the codomain and sometimes it means the image of f . This is annoying and means you have to ask someone what they mean exactly. If it is the author of a book you can only guess or hope he tells you. For this reason I shall avoid the term. From all others demand a denition. Denition 2.4.12. Suppose f : X Y is a map and A X. Then the image of A by f is written f (A) and is dened by: f (A) {y Y : x A, f (x) = y}
Exercise 2.4.9. Translate this into English The image of X then is the same thing as the image of f . The image of a set consisting of a single point, {x} is necessarily a set consisting of a single point, {y}, and we confuse ourselves by referring to y as the image of x.
44
Denition 2.4.13. If f : X Y is any map and V Y is a non-empty subset, then the pre-image of V by f , written f 1 (V ), is dened by: f 1 (V ) = {x X : f (x) V }
That is, the preimage of a set V is the set of all things that get mapped into V by f . Denition 2.4.14. A map f : A B is called onto if for every b B there is some (that means at least one) a A such that f (a) = b. Exercise 2.4.10. Write this out in formal algebra. Note that f is onto if the codomain of f equals the image f (A). Exercise 2.4.11. Which of the following maps are onto? 1. f : R R, f (x) = x2
2. det: M2,2 (R) R (which calculates the determinant of each matrix) 3. arctan(x) 4. f : N N, f (x) = 2x
Denition 2.4.15. A map f : A B is called 1-1 if f (x) = f (y) implies x = y. Exercise 2.4.12. Write out this in formal algebra Exercise 2.4.13. Which of the following maps are 1-1? 1. f : R R, f (x) = x2
2. det: M2,2 (R) R (which calculates the determinant of each matrix) 3. arctan(x) 4. f : N N, f (x) = 2x
Denition 2.4.16. A map f : A B is called bijective or a bijection if and only if f is 1-1 and onto. Exercise 2.4.14. Dene a bijection in formal terms. Remark 2.4.3. The term bijection is relatively new and in old books it was called a one-one correspondence.
2.4. RELATIONS
45
Exercise 2.4.15. Which of the above maps are bijections? Can you redene the domain and codomain to make them bijections? Denition 2.4.17. Let f : A B and g : B C be maps. Then the map g f : A C dened by (g f )(a) = g(f (a)) is called the composition or composite of f and g. Exercise 2.4.16. Consider the permutations f, g : {1, 2, 3} {1, 2, 3} dened by 1 2 3 f= 2 3 1 This convention for f means 1 2, g= 2 3, 3 1. Similarly for g:
1 2 3 2 1 3
What is g f ? f g? Note that for a nite set a bijection to itself is otherwise known as a permutation. Denition 2.4.18. If A is any non-empty set then the identity map on A is the map A : A A dened by A (a) = a for all a A. Denition 2.4.19. Let f : A B be a map. Then a map f 1 : B A is called the inverse map of f if f 1 f = A and f f 1 = B . Remark 2.4.4. This is rather confusing notation and leads people to think that when I write U = f 1 V that f 1 exists and is a map. This is wrong. Look at f (x) = x2 and observe that the pre-image of the set [1, 4] is the set [2, 1] [1, 2] which makes perfectly good sense, but there is no inverse map dened from R to R. There is of course a perfectly good inverse relation but it is not a map. The previous denition means three things: 1. f 1 is a map 2. f 1 (f (a)) = a for all a A and 3. f (f 1 (b)) = b for all b B. In particular, inverse maps need not exist. For example, the function f : R R, f (x) = x2 has no inverse map. It is easy to see why: rst 1 couldnt be sent anywhere because nothing got sent to it by f ! Second, +1 couldnt go anywhere because we wouldnt know whether to send it to +1 or 1, because f sent both of them to +1. And maps have to have unique outputs for any input.
46
Theorem 2.4.2. A map f : A B has an inverse if and only if it is a bijection. Proof: Suppose rst that f is a bijection. Dene f 1 : B A with f 1 (b) = a i f (a) = b. We rst need to show that f 1 is a map. That is we have to show that for each b B there is one and only one a with f 1 (b) = a. Let b B. Since f is onto there exists an a A with f (a) = b (that is just the denition of onto). Now suppose there was also an c A with f (c) = b. But then f (a) = b = f (c) and since f is 1-1 this implies a = c and hence there is only one a with f (a) = b and we have proved f 1 is map. The other two conditions now follow immediately. Now suppose that f has an inverse. Then there is a map f 1 with f 1 (f (a)) = a for all a A and f (f 1 (b)) = b for all b B. To show onto: Let b B. Let a = f 1 (b). Then f (a) = f (f 1 (b)) = b. To show 1-1: Suppose f (a) = f (c). Then f 1 (f (a)) = f 1 (f (c)) and hence a = c. Note that it is possible to write down rules that do NOT dene maps. To see that f : A B really is a map (for which we often say it is well-dened) we really have to check that for every a A there is one and only one b B with f (a) = b. Exercise 2.4.17. Find the domain of the function ln(ln(sin(x)))
2.4.3
Finite and Innite sets
We dene two sets A and B as having the same cardinality i there is a bijection between A and B. This gives an equivalence relation on all sets. We dene, for any n N the set n {j N : 0 < j n}
Denition 2.4.20. A set is nite i it has the same cardinality as some n and we say it has cardinality n. The set 0 is the empty set and has cardinality zero. Remark 2.4.5. For this to amount to anything we need to be sure that there is no bijection between n and m unless n = m. Try to prove this result if you are feeling very brave.
2.4. RELATIONS
47
Denition 2.4.21. A set is innite if it is not nite It is now possible to prove a number of theorems although I shall merely state them: Theorem 2.4.3. The union, intersection, cartesian product of a pair of nite sets is nite Theorem 2.4.4. The power set of a nite set is nite In fact if the set has cardinality n then the power set has cardinality 2n . Denition 2.4.22. A set is said to be countably innite if there is a bijection beteen it and N. Remark 2.4.6. It is not immediately obvious but the integers Z and the rationals Q are both countably innite. The reals R are not. It is however true that R and R2 have the same cardinality, and that the unit interval [0, 1] also has the same cardinality. We sometimes say they all have the cardinality of the continuum. There is a lot to be said about the dierence between nite and innite sets but I have too much to do to say much. Galileo noted that innite sets have the property that it is possible to have a bijection between the set and a proper subset of it; his example was the map dub : N N, n 2n. This means that there are as many even numbers as there are numbers. For any nite set it is impossible to put the set in 1-1 correspondence with a proper subset of itself. You might consider trying to prove this. Exercise 2.4.18. Google Hilberts Innite Hotel for some entertainment and enlightenment.
48
Chapter 3 Metric Spaces

3.1 Introduction
Having got the infrastructure out of the way I can start on the job of trying to nail down the idea of spaciness. Recall that I asked you to devise a way of having a space of beautiful girls. I might just as well have asked you to devise a space of music, with dierent pieces of music in dierent parts of the space. You can surely agree that some bits of music are more similar to each other, or closer to each other in music space than others. Most Rap Music, assuming that isnt a contradiction in terms, sounds a lot closer to any other rap music than it does to, say, a Beethoven symphony. It isnt therefore wholly unreasonable to ask for some way of actually representing this space. Exercise 3.1.1. Any suggestions? For the next part I shall assume you know what a real number is. You dont yet, but you know enough about them to be able to work with the ideas, and so if you feel that the order of presentation is somewhat less than logically clean, you are right. But sometimes it is good to see why we care about precision by doing things out of order. Lets give up on spaces of music and beautiful women and look at another angle to this. We keep coming up with a notion of things being closer to others. Lets try to make this more precise. There is clearly some underlying notion of the distance between pairs of points. I shall therefore try to dene, as a rst pass, a space as something that contains things which I shall call points and also has a sense of there being some sort of distance between any pair of points. After the infrastructure I can do a fair job of this. A metric 49
50 or distance on a set X is a map
CHAPTER 3. METRIC SPACES
d:X X R You should read this as saying that d takes any pair of points in X to a real number. Now ask yourself, what properties would we reasonably expect of the map d? It would be nice to ask you to think about this and come up with your own ideas, because this is the creative side of Mathematics and when you have tried it you begin to understand why mathematicians do Mathematics. It is challenging and fun. So if you want to have some of the experience of doing real live Mathematics instead of being dragged around the corpse, go away and do the next exercise before reading on. Exercise 3.1.2. What conditions do you feel would be reasonable to insist on the map d so as to capture the inuitive idea that d is specifying something you might want to call a distance function?
Spoiler Warning! Do not read on until you have tried the exercise.
3.2
Denition of a Metric Space
The rst and most obvious thing to me is that it would be silly to have negative distances, so the rst condition I shall put on is that distances are only positive or zero. This leads one to think about the zero distances: Clearly the distance of a point from itself ought to be zero. And there is a good reason to also stipulate that if the distance between two points is zero, they are the same point. I dont say this is forced because one might decide that there are cases when points might be, as it were, innitesimally distant but dierent. On the other hand that idea makes me a bit nervous, so I shall assume that if the distance between two points is zero then they must be the same point. A second fairly obvious property of d that is reasonable to impose is that the distance between x and y should be the same as the distance between y and x. It is as far from here to the pub as it is from the pub to here, although it might seem further. The last property which strikes me as desirable is that the distance between points x and y should be a minimum: it ought not to be possible to go through some other point z and have the sum of the distances from x to z
3.2. DEFINITION OF A METRIC SPACE
51
and from z to y be less than the distance from x to y. Again, one can think of things where this might not hold or you might rather it didnt. A sort of wormhole in space that meant you could get to another world by going through a stargate would be rather useful and a whole lot of fun, but we dont have them just yet. You might easily come up with a dierent list with fewer things on it or more things on it, or wildly dierent things on it. This doesnt make you wrong of course. The nature of the game here is to try to nail down an idea with precision, and we may have dierent intuitive ideas, or we may have a dierent feeling for what is important. Still, the above list is widely popular and leads to the following: Denition 3.2.1. A metric space is an ordered pair (X, d) where X is a non-empty set (the elements of which are going to be called points) and d:X X R is a map satisfying: 1. x, y X, 2. x, y X, 3. x, y, z X, d(x, y) 0 and d(x, y) = 0 d(x, y) = d(y, x) (Symmetry) d(x, y) d(x, z) + d(z, y) (Triangle Inequality) x=y
The requirement that distances between distinct points be positive is called positivity. Then we use the word metric where others might use distance. I suppose if someone comes up with a dierent denition, we still have the word distance free for it. The list of requirements for what we propose to mean by a distance or metric are called axioms, and in the dim and distant past, axioms were known as self evident truths. This is simply muddle. The conditions are not truths obtained by navel gazing or by reaching out with the mind into some Platonic universe1 , we are making them up so as to articulate some intuitive ideas precisely. It might turn out that they are less than satisfactory, in
The (unnatural) philosopher Plato thought this was what Mathematics was doing. Plato was a sort of literary gent who wasnt any good at Mathematics, but that didnt stop him ponticating about it. He is said to have written to Archimedes, a real mathematician, telling him it was undignied to mess around with physical apparatus such as levers and mirrors and he should stick to pure thought. What Archimedes did with the letter is not known, but if he used it for toilet paper it would have been about the best and most sensible thing to do. Being, like all good mathematicians, an extremely practical man, the chances are good that this is exactly what Archimedes did.
1
52
Figure 3.1: The Triangle inequality on the line. which case we should change them. What exactly satisfactory means in this case will emerge gradually. Exactly the same applies to the axioms of set theory. If we feel that we can make sense of things using them, we keep them, if not we junk them and start again. Now we have said in very, very general terms something about what a space is, we need to see if there are any. With reasonable luck, the standard spacy things really are metric spaces. Exercise 3.2.1. What would we do if they werent? If we couldnt nd any?
3.3
Examples of Metric Spaces

x, y R, d(x, y) = |x y|
Proposition 3.3.1. R is a metric space with
Proof: We have to conrm the three axioms hold. (1) x, y R, |x y| 0 and |x y| = 0 x = y This follows from the denition of |x|, which is |x| = x when x 0 else |x| = x. (2) |x y| = |y x| again from the denition of the absolute value, and from this it follows immediately that d(x, y) = d(y, x). (3) x, y, z R, we can take the cases x < z < y and x < y < z, and all other cases can be obtained by changing the names or making one or more of
3.3. EXAMPLES OF METRIC SPACES
53
[ y 2[ y [ x 2[ x
1
Figure 3.2: Pythagoras comes galloping to the rescue. the inequalities an equality. In the rst case, d(x, z) + d(z, y) = d(x, y) and in the second d(x, z) + d(z, y) > d(x, y) since we have to go backwards. See gure 3.1. Thus all the axioms for a metric space are satised and with this denition of d, (R, d) is a metric space. Exercise 3.3.1. Check all the details by looking at every possible kind of location for x, y, z. This is moderately good news: we have done something to nail down an intuitive idea about distance and how it should be, and we nd, as we might have hoped, that R with the usual sense of distance between points on the number line is just one of the very general class of spacy things. Exercise 3.3.2. What might we have done if this had gone bung? If R with our usual sense of distance had failed to be a metric space? Of course, that is a very simple case. Does it work for R2 ? There is a very standard sense of distance between points in R2 obtained by running Pythagoras Theorem backwards. We draw the line joining the two points and Pythagoras tells us how to calculate its length, see gure 3.2. I claim that this is also a metric space. Proposition 3.3.2. (R2 , d) is a metric space with the denition: d x1 x2 , y1 y2 = (x1 y1 )2 + (x2 y2 )2
54
Proof: Again we have to conrm all three of the axioms are satised in this case. (1) Writing x1 y1 x= , y= x2 y2 we have that d(x, y) 0 since it is the (positive) square root of a number which, being the sum of two squares cannot be negative. Moreover, the only way it can be zero is if both of the terms in the sum are zero, which is certainly going to happen if x = y and only when x = y. (2) d(x, y) = d(y, x) follows immediately from the denition of d. (3) I shall assume here that the formula from school that says for any two vectors x, y in Rn (for n = 2 or n = 3), x q y = x y cos() holds, where x is the length of the vector x, x q y is the dot product and is the angle between the vectors. Since 1 cos() 1 we can, with modest condence, assert: |x q y| x y The Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality
Someone needs to prove this result properly, since the assumption that everything you learnt at school is trustworthy is denitely not something in which you should feel much condence. With any luck it will be done in a good linear algebra course, if not google it and work through a proof. Now we have from the properties of the dot product that (x + y) q (x + y) = x q x + 2x q y + y q y or x+y
2 2 2
= x
+ y
+ 2x q y
Given this, and assuming for the time being the Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality, it follows that x+y
2
+2 x y + y
Taking the square root of both sides we deduce x+y x + y (3.1)
55
This gives us the triangle inequality, for suppose u, v, w are three vectors in Rn , then we need to prove, using the above notation, uv uw + wv This comes out by putting x = u w and y = w v and using equation 3.1. Note that the triangle inequality in R2 is one of those things which is geometrically very obvious, but proof by looking at a picture is not something we tolerate. The idea may come from looking at a picture, but the argument should always be in symbols strings. Thats what proofs are 2 . Remark 3.3.1. The proof that R2 with the euclidean metric is a metric space is a bit trickier than one might expect, but the treatment I have given at least shows that this extends to Rn for any positive integer n. We certainly have an extension of the dot product (called the standard inner product) and the length of a vector x Rn can be taken to be the square root of x q x; and the distance from x to y can be taken to be the length of x y. None of this has anything to do with the dimension of the space x is in, although it does need to be Rn for some n, so we can have the standard inner product dened. Actually it goes a lot further than this and into some really bizarre places. More on this later. Note that in any metric space, X, we have for any positive real number r and any point x X, an idea of a disc or ball centred on x of radius r. If the metric space happens to be a vector space, which our examples have all been so far, then we could centre the ball on the origin. If we wanted to. Formally: Denition 3.3.1. In any metric space (X, d), for any a X, for any R+ , the open ball on a of radius is the set B (a)
2
{x X :
d(x, a) < }
The price we pay for precision is that we have to do a lot of work. Being vague and hazy about things means you can also be a lazy slob. Western civilisation is based on a judgment that being a lazy slob is not worth it. So are all the other great civilisations. If you prefer being a lazy slob you belong on one of those islands where the coconuts fall into your hands and you just lounge around all day waiting for them to fall. Not, in my view, a good way to spend a life, but then, Im a westerner. No doubt all cultures are equally good in their own terms, and a life of poverty, disease and a diet consisting largely of coconuts is a perfectly sound lifestyle choice if you like that sort of thing. You choose. Or of course you can be a freeloader on Western civilisation like the arts students. I leave you to work out the problems associated with us all being hamburger ippers or bureaucrats. And do not understimate the matter of winding up with a rather low self-respect as a result of having wallowed in bullshit when you could have been learning exciting but dicult ideas.
56
Denition 3.3.2. If X is a vector space which is also a metric space, with origin 0 and metric d, the unit open ball is the set B1 (0) {x X : d(x, 0) < 1}
Denition 3.3.3. If (X, d) and (Y, e) are metric spaces, there is product metric on X Y dened by (d, e) ((x1 , y1 ), (x2 , y2 )) = max{d(x1 , x2 ), e(y1 , y2 )} Exercise 3.3.3. Show this is a metric on the cartesian product of the sets. Remark 3.3.2. actually there are other possible denitions of the product metric. Suggest two. If stuck, come back to this later after reading on a bit. We need a metric space which is not one of the Rn with the euclidean metric, or things will be rather sad and boring. There are two things one could do, choose a dierent underlying set, or choose R2 again but invent a new metric. Lets look at the rst option.
3.3.1
Subspaces
The rst is rather easy, since we have immediately: Proposition 3.3.3. Any subset A of the set X of a metric space (X, d) is also a metric space with the metric d inherited from d and dened by a, b A, d (a, b) = d(a, b)
Proof: Obviously d(a, b) makes sense since a, b A a, b X since A X. Moreover all three axioms hold for d precisely because they hold for d. It would be as well to satisfy yourself that the last claim really works. Dont trust me, for heavens sake. I dont. This gives us: Denition 3.3.4. If (X, d) is a metric space, any nonempty subset A X is, with the inherited metric, called a subspace of X It immediately follows that the unit sphere in R3 is a metric space. Also the unit circle in R2 . I shall call the unit sphere in R3 by the name S 2 and the unit circle in R2 by the name S 1 . Exercise 3.3.4. Why those particular numbers?
57
Exercise 3.3.5. Explain why I needed a dierent map d on the subset A X when I had the metric d on X. Why didnt I just use d again? Remark 3.3.3. Despite the previous exercise, I give notice that I shall do something utterly dreadful: I shall use the same symbol d for the metric in the original space and a proper subspace. I hope you are not horribly shocked. This gives us immediately a whole lot of spacy things and this makes us feel immediately that the whole enterprise of making our intuitive ideas about spaciness precise looks promising. (Actually we are going to get a nasty surprise at some point, so do not fall too deeply in love with metric spaces. They have a fatal aw.) When looking for alternatives to Rn with the euclidean metric we have gone some way to enlarge our horizons, although not perhaps as far as one might wish. It does however suggest a way of getting a space of beautiful girls. We take a whole lot of measurements on a whole lot of girls. This could include pointing a camera at them, which will give a million numbers for a 1 Megapixel camera, and correspondingly more for better cameras. Lets suppose we have done this for a million girls and suppose we have recorded ten million numbers for each of them. Then each girl is a point in R10,000,000 . All we have to do is to colour the beautiful ones a tasteful purple and the ugly ones green. If we assume that all girls suciently close to a beautiful girl in all their measurements are also beautiful, then we can make each actual girl a sort of blob. Then the collection of purple blobs represents the beautiful girl space. And, I suppose, the green blobs represent an ugly girl space. But Ive never seen an ugly girl and think they are mythical. Exercise 3.3.6. Suppose somebody else chose a dierent set of measurements from you, but you agreed completely on which girls are beautiful. Are there two dierent bg spaces or just one which has been put into Rn in two dierent ways? The answer to the last exercise is not without interest since a space of dimension 107 leaves a bit to be desired. If you wanted to decide if a new girl is beautiful or ugly you might want to work out how far away she is from a purple patch or a green patch, and this might take a long time in a humungous dimensional space. Just looking at her might be a lot quicker. These considerations are not entirely frivolous since they arise in the problem of Pattern Recognition. Of course, the whole thing about beautiful girls is silly, since all girls are beautiful, although some are, perhaps, sometimes slightly more beautiful than others.
58
3.3.2
Other Metric Spaces
Suppose I take a nite set. Can I put a metric on it? Yes, and usually in a lot of dierent ways. One stands out, make all the distinct points at distance one from each other. Surprisingly, this works for any non-empty set: Denition 3.3.5. If X is any non-empty set, the discrete metric d on X is dened by x, y X, d(x, y) = 1 i x = y. Obviously we need x X, d(x, x) = 0. Exercise 3.3.7. Prove this is a metric. Exercise 3.3.8. We can put the discrete metric on R or R2 . The resulting spaces are nothing like the original ones, but pretty much like each other. Explain why. We could also have a slight variant of the discrete metric: we arrange that all the distinct points should be at a distance of from each other. Or any other positive number. One option we have not yet looked at is the question of whether we could take R2 or R3 and put another metric on it. We have certainly found one rather bizarre case, in fact an innite family of bizarre cases; lets see if there are any less extravagantly weird metrics.
3.3.3
Alternative Metrics on Rn
I could get a new metric on R2 by simply multiplying the value of the euclidean metric by a xed positive number. So my distances might be all twice yours if you insist on the usual euclidean distance. Formally, x, y R2 , d (x, y) = 2d(x, y), and this would denitely still be a metric, although you might think the dierence between the metrics doesnt amount to much. What if we dened x, y R2 , d (x, y) = or x, y R2 , d (x, y) = (d(x, y))2 ? Exercise 3.3.9. Which of these is a metric given that d is? What if we dene on R d (x, y) = arctan(|x y|) d(x, y)
59
is this a metric? You may have a feeling that just doubling distances on R doesnt amount to much of a change, whereas taking the arctan is a rather bigger one, and the discrete metric is very dierent. I shall come back to this later, and we can see how far our feelings can be turned into mathematical propositions. First, some alternative metrics on R2 : Denition 3.3.6. We dene the manhattan (or L1 ) metric on R2 by: x1 x2 , y1 y2 R2 , dm x1 x2 , y1 y2 = |x1 y1 | + |x2 y2 |
Exercise 3.3.10. Google Earth Manhattan if you have never heard of the place and look at the layout of most of it; zoom in around Central Park and look to the South of it, then draw a picture of the manhattan metric and work out why it has that name. Exercise 3.3.11. Prove that the manhattan metric is a metric. (Calling something a metric doesnt make it one!) Exercise 3.3.12. Generalise this metric to one on Rn for n > 2 Exercise 3.3.13. Draw the unit circle in R2 in the manhattan metric. Denition 3.3.7. The L metric on R2 is dened by x1 x2 = max{|x1 |, |x2 |}
.
and the distance between x and y is x y
Exercise 3.3.14. Sketch the unit ball in the L metric on R2 : Hint:This has led to the claim that topologists have square balls. Exercise 3.3.15. Prove the L metric on R2 is a metric. Exercise 3.3.16. You might, in view of your ndings in the last few exercises, formulate a conjecture that says that you could enclose the origin in R2 with any simple (non-intersecting) closed curve or polygon, and declare the distance from the origin of every point on it to be one. Then in any direction, this is the unit distance, and other points along a given line would be measured along that line, distance one being where it hits the curve. Call this distance from the origin the norm of the point, x, and write it as x C , where C is the closed simple curve. Then dC (x, y) = x y C . Would this work? Or are there any constraints on the shape of C?
60
Exercise 3.3.17. In order to assist in the last exercise, I dene a generalised inner product on R2 to be a 2 2 symmetric matrix A and write x, y R2 , x, y = xT Ay
Putting angle brackets instead of a dot between the vectors is done to make sure we dont confuse our generalised inner product with the standard dot product. Physicists will feel happy with this from Quantum Mechanics. More explicitly, x, y R2 , x, y = x1 x2 a b b c y1 y2
Note that the usual dot product just has A the identity map. Now try it out with a = 3, b = 1, c = 4 and try to gure out whether this x, x . What does the closed curve C look gives a norm on R2 with x = like in this case? Exercise 3.3.18. Generalise the dierent metrics and norms to Rn for any positive integer n. Exercise 3.3.19. How wildly dierent are the various metrics we have worked out so far? Do you have any intuitions about them? So far we have concentrated rather a lot on vector spaces, and of course we have any non-empty subsets of them thrown in as well. There is one rather extremal case which is innite dimensional and which you need to know about. The reasons you need to know about it are that (a) it is very, very cool, and also (b) useful3 .
3.3.4
Function Spaces
Functions are clearly another example of things that are both algebraic and spacy. You can add and multiply them, but you can also see that you can get closer and closer to a function by approximating it. The power series for the
It may seem strange, but mathematicians who simply pursue the ultracool on account of its coolth, nd that very often the cooler it is, the more useful it turns out to be eventually. Complex numbers and functions were explored because of their enormmous coolth, and are now vital to physicists and engineers. Group theory is another example of the pursuit of coolth turning out to be immensely useful. Having mathematical research directions determined by people having the aim of making us more ecient at turning a buck is a really, really bad idea. In fact having small-minded, narrow, ignorant, stupid people tell smart, bright, creative people what to do is a really, really bad idea. Nuke Canberra.
3
61
|| f || f
Figure 3.3: The norm of a function from [0, 1] to R. exponential and trigonometric functions are cases in point. Thinking about a function as a point in a space of functions may seem strange, but I hope you got used to thinking that a beautiful girl could be a point in a space of girls. I dont deny that both are weird, but weird beats boring any time. I take the set of all continuous functions from [0, 1] to R. I shall name this set: Denition 3.3.8. C 0 ([0, 1], R) is the set of all continuous functions from the unit interval [0, 1] to the real numbers. Instead of dening a metric on it, I shall instead dene a norm. I can do this because it is obvious to the meanest intellect that C 0 ([0, 1], R) is a vector space. What this means is that I can add and scale things in it. When I write 3 cos(t) + 4 sin(t) + t2 I am scaling the function cos by 3, the function sin by 4, and adding them up together with the squaring function. Nothing new here, just a new way of looking at it. Now I take the norm of a function in C 0 ([0, 1], R), which I think of as its distance from the origin in C 0 ([0, 1], R) by taking the supremum of its absolute value, as in the gure 3.3. Formally: f C 0 ([0, 1], R), f
= sup {|f (x)|}

x[0,1]
Then it is a result of analysis that this number always exists. It is called the L norm on the space C 0 ([0, 1], R). And we can dene the L metric by the
62
Figure 3.4: A (red) function within tolerance of the original (black) function. usual way of saying f, g C 0 ([0, 1], R), d (f, g) = f g
I claim this really is a metric on the set. It is surprisingly easy to prove. Exercise 3.3.20. Do it! It is pretty obvious from the way we have dened this metric, that it is reasonably satisfactory for talking about approximation of functions. If I have a sequence of functions which get closer to a given function in this sense, then the values of the functions must always be getting closer and closer at any given point. In fact I could draw a tube or band around the limiting function and anything inside the band has distance from the function not greater than the width of the band. The red function is reasonably close to the black one in this sense in gure 3.4. Exercise 3.3.21. There are other possible norms and hence metrics on this space. Devise some others. One of the problems with metric spaces is that the idea of spaciness is clearly not being captured by them in some function spaces. Suppose I had taken the space C 0 (R, R) of all continuous functions from R to R. It is certainly a well dened set. It is equally certainly a vector space. My intuitions tell me that it is spacy. But the attempt to put the metric d on it fails miserably. What is the distance between x2 and the constant zero function? In this case
3.4. MAPS BETWEEN METRIC SPACES
63
the supremum doesnt exist, and there is no totally convincing way of putting it back. If you had any success with the last exercise and found three or four other metrics, then you can see they generally break down for C 0 (R, R) too. This is the rst hint we have had that the uy notion of spaciness may not be entirely captured by the denition of a metric space. There will be another one along later. One approach is to give up on metric spaces, but this would be premature. Let us merely note that there is a sort of spaciness which they dont capture very well and pass on to some things they can do.
3.4
Maps between Metric Spaces
In the last section I took two metric spaces, [0, 1] and R and casually discussed the set of continuous maps between them. You have met a denition of continuity for these particular metric spaces, but it might occur to you to wonder if the notion of spaciness and the notion of continuity are related. It might even occur to you that the essential thing about spaciness may well be something to do with what you can do to spacy things, and that continuity is a sort of restriction on what you are allowed to do. Let me develop this from a rather vague and uy point of view rst. You may be sure that I shall not stay vague and uy any longer than I can help, but at this stage it is important to get the general shape of the ideas.
3.4.1
The Chewing Gum World
Suppose I take the metric space consisting of the circle, S 1 , and another consisting of the two-sphere S 2 . Now I can certainly talk about a map from one into the other. If I take a map from S 1 to S 2 I can imagine representing it as follows: I walk around the circle and as I do so I touch a pen onto the sphere which I imagine hanging in the air above the circle, something like gure 3.5. I dont move the pen horizontally but I can move it vertically as long as it stays in contact with the sphere. By the time I have returned to the starting place, I might have the same vertical height as when I started in which case the image set would be a closed loop. It would be natural to want the red curve which is the image of the map to join up. It wouldnt be forced to join up, I could have a break in the image, but our instincts are that it damned well should join up. That in any physically realistic process, it jolly well would join up. Why? Well, points that are awfully close to each other on the circle should
64
start
Figure 3.5: Me making a map from S 1 to S 2 .
start
Figure 3.6: The image of a discontinuous map from S 1 to S 2 .
not wind up miles apart on the sphere. In much the same way, when you cross the road, it takes a certain amount of time and if at mid-day you are still on this side of the road, then at mid-day plus a nanosecond you ought to still be on this side or at least not far from it. If you were mysteriously on the other side of the road, it would excite comment. I would go further and say that it makes sense in the case of the circle and the sphere to ask that it would be good if the curve should be smooth. But that is for third year. For the moment, lets just say that we would like to have no breaks in the curve or that Im not allowed to take my pen o the sphere and must wind up with a closed loop. So gure 3.6 is not the image of a continuous map from S 1 to S 2 , but gure 3.7 probably is. It sounds reasonable that this can be dened (that is, made non-uy) even though neither metric space is actually Rn for any n. By contrast, if we took the metric space R2 , ripped o the origin, placed
65
start
Figure 3.7: The image of a continuous map from S 1 to S 2 . everything else down on another copy of R2 again, like putting a piece of graph paper on another, in exactly the same place they started from, and then as an afterthought plonked the one time origin at some other point, I claim we would have a map that is not continuous. Or if we ripped the plane R2 along the y axis and put the two bits down with a gap between them. Exercise 3.4.1. Write down an explicit map from R2 to R2 which could be plausibly described by the last sentence. I want you to tell me where every point of R2 goes to and I want you to be sure it really is a map. Likewise, if I took my pen o the sphere while walking around it and suddenly jumped it up or down so the loop became a collection of disconnected curves, I would feel that we had done something reprehensible. Not totally evil, but slightly nasty. Like going out of your way to trample on fresh snow, or carving your name on your desk4 . Recall my picture of a map, gure 2.2, from the last chapter with two lumpy things representing any old sets you want to choose, and the idea that you picked up the left one, the domain of the map, and stretched and twisted it and then plonked it down on the right hand set. I draw the picture again for you to brood over. This visualises the map as a sort of process; sets are nouns but maps are verbs5 .
I suppose we should not be too censorious of people who carve their names on desks or write obscene messages to the next class. Its as close to doing something creative as they are ever likely to get. 5 Sort of. Sometimes maps are things and we operate on them. For example, we could take the set C (R, R) of all innitely dierentiable maps from R to R and write D : C (R, R) C (R, R), f f
4
where D is the action of dierentiation. D is a map, it does something, which is OK, but
66
f x
Y > y >
Figure 3.8: A picture of a map. Lets take some bog-standard maps from R to R and visualise them as operations. This will be a new way of thinking about them: up to date you have visualised them using their graphs, now I ask you to visualise them as operations. Just as for my image of general sets in gure 3.8 I shall think of the real line as being made of something stretchy like chewing gum or plasticene, and I will take one copy of it, a sort of ruler made of chewing gum, and stretch it and deform it and then plonk it down on a ruler made of something rigid. The process of doing the stretching and plonking is the map. First the identity map, usually written as y = x but in my notation R , and shown in gure 3.9. Clearly, this doesnt do any stretching and just moves the stretchy ruler carefully across to plonk it on the non-stretchy one carefully, each number over itself. Next the map dub: R R, x 2x. This stretches everything uniformly so that every interval gets sent to an interval twice as long. Exercise 3.4.2. Draw this representation for the map from R2 to R2 which sends the vector x to 2x. Note that you cant do that with graphs! Exercise 3.4.3. Draw the map f (x) = 1 2x. Also the constant map f (x) = 1. Describe it in chewing gum terms. Now do it for the map |x|. Then for f (x) = x2 , and nally for sin(x).
the things on which it operates are also maps. Oh well, maybe sometimes a map is a verb and other times its a noun. The grammar for Mathematics is pretty tight, but it doesnt t all that well into natural language grammatical categories.
67
2 1 0 -1 -2 R >
2 1 0 -1 -2
Figure 3.9: The identity map R from R to R
2 1 0 -1 -2 dub >
2 1 0 -1 -2
Figure 3.10: The doubling map dub from R to R
68 Note that all these maps are continuous.
Exercise 3.4.4. Now draw in chewing gum terms the map from R to R: x 0 f (x) = x + 1 x < 0 f (x) = x 1 also the map x = 0 f (x) = x; f (0) = 1 The conclusion to which you should be being pushed is that discontinuous functions, seen as operations on a chewing gum ruler, tear the chewing gum somewhere, and continuous ones dont. Exercise 3.4.5. Conrm this by nding other continuous and discontinuous functions and seeing what they do to R. Try it for maps from R to R2 and for maps from R2 to R2 .
3.4.2
Making intuitions precise: an example
Ive given a case of making intuitions precise by specifying a metric space as the articulation of spaciness and pointed out a shortcoming of this, Now I want to take the intuitive idea of not tearing as a property of a map between metric spaces, and make this precise. The objective is to articulate this idea in terms of set theory, which in this case mainly means using metric spaces. It will turn out that this idea of continuity of maps is more fundamental than the idea of a metric space. So you will see that this is an important idea to make clear6 . The way in which we do this is to study simple examples to death. We look at particular cases very, very hard7 .
Much of the skill of the mathematician consists of working out which are the key ideas to turn into Mathematics. We have been spending most of the last few hundred years taking the ideas of Physics and Geometry and making them precise, but there are other ideas which undoubtedly need the same treatment. It has been said that our advances in the Physical Sciences have greatly exceeded our advances in the social sciences. Maybe its time to do something about this. 7 I once gave a public lecture on my research and gave some examples of the sorts of things I wanted to understand very clearly, and a lady afterwards sttod up and said, surely you dont expect to understand how people work by studying such simple things as you talked about? I replied that yes, I did. Galileo came to an understanding of motion by rolling balls down an inclined plane, and that is roughly the stage we are at. A more comprehensive repy would have been to turn it on its head: How do you expect to understand complicated things if you cant understand the simple ones?
6
69
image of origin hole >

>
Figure 3.11: A map from R2 to R2 which is discontinuous at the origin. So I shall compare two maps from R2 to R2 one of which is continuous and does not tear, and the other of which is discontinuous, and tears a point out by the roots so you can almost hear it scream. The maps will be fairly similar so I can focus on the basic dierence. The rst one is the discontinuous one. It is going to take every point in R2 to 1 itself except the origin, which will be ripped out and put at the point . 1 It is clear that any reasonable intuition will describe this as tearing the plane at the origin. A picture of it is given in gure 3.11, where, since points are a bit small, I have had to represent the origin, and its image, as a green blob. The second map agrees with the rst map everywhere outside the circle of radius 1/2, that is to say, everything gets sent to itself. To describe what happens inside the circle is a bit dicult to specify in algebra (but not impossible), but I shant worry about that since we are still in intuitive, i.e. scruy mode at present. So I want you to imagine I poke my nger up into this disc of radius 1/2 from underneath until it forms a sort of small worm, clinging stickily to my nger (yeuk!) and pointing up into the sky. This has stetched the disc around the origin into something roughly conical. In the picture, gure 3.13, I have shown it as a cone sticking up in the third dimension and have a map from R2 into R3 . The tip of the cone is where the origin goes to. Exercise 3.4.6. Write down this map in algebra. If you call the the domain x s space with points and the codomain the space with points y , you t z
70
>
Figure 3.12: A map from R2 to R3 which is continuous at the origin.
need to get explicit functions x(s, t), y(s, t), z(s, t). Give it a height at the origin of 2 I need a map into R2 so I tilt the cone and iron it at so the tip of the cone 1 goes to the point . So the nal map looks rather like gure 3.13. The 1 bit that formed the cone you will note covers the origin in the codomain, and I claim that this map is a respectable continuous map which does not tear, although it does stretch a disc to a attened cone. It is not 1 1 on the disc in general, since opposite sides of it will be squashed onto the same point in the codomain. The body of the cone certainly covers the line segment from 1 the origin to the point . 1 Now we have to look at the dierence between the two maps, the discontinuous one and the continuous one. Clearly the disc I stretched in the continuous case could have been a lot smaller, but as long as the radius is some positive real number, I can say that although I might have been obliged to do some considerable amount of stretching, I havent done any tearing. The discontinuous case clearly isnt like this. Take an imaginary paint pot of red paint, and paint a little disc around the 1 point in the codomain. I have drawn this in gure 3.13. Now look to 1 see which points of the domain wind up coloured red. Run things backwards so they are painted red too. Now look at the red points in the domain, the ones that wind up under the red disc.
71
>
Figure 3.13: A map from R2 to R2 which is continuous at the origin. For the continuous case, we get a red disc centred at 1 , because the 1 map was the identity here. We also get a red spot at the origin because this went to the centre of the red disc, and we also get a red tip to the cone, which means some little red disc containing the origin, although it might be a slightly deformed disc, because we stretched the disc into a cone and then put it down a bit unevenly. So in the continuous case, the picture of the domain looks like gure 3.14. In the discontinuous case, there is no red disc around the origin, although the origin itself is red. No other point went near the red disc except those points already in it. You can see that the continuous stretching forces us to have at least some red points close to the origin in the continuous case, but not in the discontinuous case where we tore the origin out. In the discontinuous case, there the origin sits, red and severely alone. I show the case of the domain with two bits painted red for the case where the map is the continuous one. The discontinuous one has only the origin itself painted red and it is a bit dicult to draw a red point. I cant make it a blob because it really isnt one, and that is the whole point8 . Now we have to take these observations and turn them into algebra. Once you have the idea clear, this is quite easy. Recall the earlier denition of an open ball: In any metric space (X, d) for any point a X, the open ball B (a) of radius centred on a is the set B (a) = {x X : d(x, a) < }
8
Sorry about that.
72
Figure 3.14: The red bits wind up inside a red disc in R2 for the continuous map. Exercise 3.4.7. Sketch the open ball of radius one half centred on the origin in the space [0, 1] with the usual metric. Denition 3.4.1. For any map f : X Y between metric spaces, and any point a X, f is continuous at a i for any open ball in Y of radius centred on f (a), there is an open ball in X, B (a), of radius centred on a, such that f (B (a)) B (f (a)) Exercise 3.4.8. Write a short letter to your grannie (an imaginary grannie will do ne) which explains how the last denition distinguishes between stretching and tearing, and says in algebra exactly what is happening in the stretching case. I have written the last denition out in a mixture of algebra and English, and the actual metrics on the spaces are ignored: they get replaced by the idea of an open ball. Here is an almost completely algebraic version which mentions the metrics: Denition 3.4.2. a X, f : (X, d) (Y, e) is continuous at a i R+ , R+ , x A, d(x, a) < e(f (x), f (a)) <
It is technically defective because I havent quantied over the metric spaces (X, d) and (Y, e) (or even said they are metric spaces). I hope you will forgive me for this.
3.4. MAPS BETWEEN METRIC SPACES Exercise 3.4.9. Show the two denitions are equivalent. And now the denition you have all been waiting for: Denition 3.4.3. f : (X, d) (Y, e) is continuous i a X, continuous at a.
73
f is
Remark 3.4.1. You will note that when both (X, d) and (Y, e) are just R with the euclidean metric, this is the standard denition of continuity you had in rst year. This is good news, and tells us something which was completely omitted from the rst year discussion on continuity, which is that it is all about not tearing. This is worth knowing and now you know it. Remark 3.4.2. You will also observe that it now makes sense to talk about the continuity of maps from Rn to Rm , from S 1 to S 2 , and maps between a squillion other metric spaces. This is denitely a good thing. Remark 3.4.3. The advantage of going to an abstract metric space is that we can do a squillion things at once9 . The process of trying to capture a vague idea by going to a very abstract entity like a metric space is something many people feel is fraught with risk. Abstraction is all about throwing away the irrelevant detail. Some people feel that if you threw away that much bath water, there must have been a baby in it somewhere. It is natural to want to have concrete things you believe in and work with them rather than venture into uncharted territory, and so some students hate abstraction. Against this, a little thought will show you that it is more a matter of being mentally stodgy and sticking to the familiar rather than an objection to abstractions as such: the real numbers and functions are pretty abstract, after all. But you are used to them. On the other hand, mathematicians are only comfortable with abstract ideas when they have a good number of particular, solid, concrete cases of them. If there werent any, we wouldnt be interested. Note that we came up with an articulation of the idea of continuity by looking hard at simple cases. We noticed that maps take sets to sets, and in particular maps between spaces with an idea of distance, the metric spaces, take spaces to spaces. And that some of these maps rip and rend the spaces in thoroughly disreputable ways, while others might stretch things but did not rip or rend. And this idea of not tearing is pretty basic. Although it sounds almost trivial, continuity is one of the deep ideas that we assume must be simple because we are used to it from childhood. When a y buzzes about the nursery, we watch it and
Mathematicians dont feel they are earning their money if they only solve one problem. They want to solve at least an innite number all in one hit.
9
74
there is something which never happens and which we know never happens. The y never vanishes from one point and suddenly reappears at another a discernible distance away. Likewise, when a car moves along the highway, we would think we had gone barking mad if we clearly saw it vanish and reappear somewhere further along the road. These things dont happen in our world. Motion is continuous. This alone would necessitate looking closely at the idea. And the continuity of motion is frequently a nuisance. If we want to go from here to the pub or the farthest stars, we have to go through a lot of other places we are not the least bit interested in visiting. In the case of the farthest stars, were dished. Weve grown used to this, we take it for granted. It would be very nice if we could dismantle ourselves here and reassemble ourselves somewhere far, far away a moment later, as Indian Fakirs were supposed to be able to do10 . Your childhood experience of playing with balloons should convince you that any continuous map from S 2 to R2 cannot be 1-1 (imagine squashing a ballloon onto the oor). There is a map, you can do it, but you have to burst the balloon, which means the map is not continuous. This fact, well known to small children, is a mathematical theorem11 . It may be that the world of Quantum Mechanics does not require continuity. Maybe we will be able to gure out how to make a stargate one day. But the people who do it will have to understand continuity rst.
3.4.3
Equivalence of metrics
Now we have obtained a nice shiny high-precision denition of what it means for a map between metric spaces to be continuous we can have a look at the possible alternative metrics we put on R2 , and decide which ones are really dierent and which ones are really pretty much the same. Denition 3.4.4. If (X, d) and (X, e) are two dierent metric spaces on the same underlying set X, we say that the metric d is ner than the metric e i the identity map X : (X, d) (X, e) is continuous. Denition 3.4.5. If (X, d) and (X, e) are two dierent metric spaces on the same underlying set X, we say that the metric d is equivalent to the metric e i d is ner than e and e is ner than d.
But it is noticeable that when they go to America from India they go by air rather than using more interesting methods. And in an aeroplane rather than on a magic carpet. 11 And a bugger to prove. May be done in an Honours Algebraic Topology course if you are lucky.
10
75
Or equivalently, metrics are equivalent i the identity map is continuous in both directions, from (X, d) to (X, e) and also from (X, e) to (X, d). Denition 3.4.6. If d is ner than e I shall also say e is coarser than d. The rest is an important sequence of exercises which are quite fun to do and will x the ideas in your head. Exercise 3.4.10. Take the euclidean metric, the manhattan metric and the L metric on R2 and decide if they are equivalent or if not which is the ner of any pair. Exercise 3.4.11. Now compare the euclidean metric and the discrete metric on R2 and decide which is the ner. Exercise 3.4.12. Now take the metric arctan(d) on R where d is the usual euclidean metric. Note than in it, no two points are further than a distance of apart. Is this equivalent to, ner than or coarser than the euclidean metric? Exercise 3.4.13. On the space C 0 ([0, 1], R) of continuous functions from the unit interval to R, we had the L metric dened. Dene the L1 metric by
1
d1 (f, g) =
0
|f (x) g(x)| dx
(Note that this says that the distance betwen two functions is the area between their graphs.) First show this is a metric, then explain why the names for these metrics are as they are, nally decide which metric is ner or if they are equivalent.
3.4.4
Composites of Continuous maps

XY Z
g f
Suppose we have continuous maps between metric spaces. I have neglected to name the metrics and will shamelessly use the letter d for all of them. This would be utterly irresponsible of me if I didnt warn you, but is not too deplorable if I do. Even if some or all the spaces are the same, the metrics need not be. Then there is a well dened composite map f g : X Z dened by x X, f g(x) = f (g(x))
76
Is this continuous? You can decide this in your head with a bit of thought. Try it before reading on and see if we agree: Theorem 3.4.1. The composite of continuous maps is continuous. Proof: a X, R+ , if B (f (g(a))) is the ball of radius centred on f (g(a)), then R+ such that the ball B (f (a)) of radius centred on f (a) Y satises g(B (f (a))) B (f (g(a))). This follows from the continuity of g. And for this same value of , R+ such that the ball B (a) of radius centred on a satises f (B (a)) B (f (a)), since f is continuous. Hence a X, R+ , R+ , f (g(B (a)) B (f (g(a))
Hence by denition, f g is continuous. I have used a mixture of Mathematics and English to prove this result; this is a lot scruer than it might be. You might get some satisfaction out of improving the presentation. You had to prove in rst year that the sum of continuous maps is continuous, the product of continuous maps is continuous, multiplying a continuous map by a constant gives another continuous map, and maybe others. This is because the maps you dealt with were from R to R and it made sense to add them, multiply them and so on. But now we just have the metric space structure, and not a whi of algebra anywhere. So none of these issues arise. Insert smiley HERE
3.5
Open Sets
There are neater ways of describing continuous maps which took a fair while to discover but which pay a big dividend as we shall see. The connection with not tearing is far from obvious, and if I were a mean bastard I could simply give you an obscure denition and say nothing about the painful process by which it was obtained. Many text books do exactly this, which makes them a stressful read for the beginner, but I am a nice guy and will show you something of the train of thought. This takes a lot longer but shows you something of the process. If you ever get to do research in Mathematics that will amount to anything more than minor extensions of what is already known, this will be very useful to you. And if not, at least you will be able to see that mathematics is a human activity and not the product of godlike
3.5. OPEN SETS
77
superiority, even if there are mathematicians, moral imbeciles all, who would like you to think that. We have made a lot of use of the idea of the open ball, which is in turn a generalisation of the idea of an open interval. And the point about an open as opposed to a closed interval is that the open interval hasnt got the end points in it. I shall give an intuitive, uy, description of the ideas rst. You should be used to this by now. In the line, an open interval looks a lot like the line itself: if you were sitting in the middle of (0, 1) and were very myopic, you would not be able to tell you werent anywhere in R. On the other hand, a single point doesnt look anything like R. Similarly, if you are in any open ball in R2 , as long as you cant see any further than the immediate locality you might as well be anywhere in R2 . On the other hand, if the set you were in is the x-axis, you would not think you were in R2 , youd think you were in R. So open sets capture something of the structure of the space in which it is an open set. That is why they are important. Denition 3.5.1. A subset A of a metric space X is said to be open in X i for every a A there is some open ball centred on a wholly contained in A. Exercise 3.5.1. Translate this wholly into algebra. Remark 3.5.1. Notice that I dene the term open in X not just open. The casual language of open sets is a bit unfortunate because it suggests that openness is a property of the set while actually it is a property of the relationship between the set and the space it is sitting in. The next exercise should clarify this: Just in case you have forgotten or were never told: Denition 3.5.2. (0, 1) {x R : 0 < x & x < 1} [0, 1] {x R : 0 x & x 1}
Note that 0 < x & x < 1 is usually abbreviated to 0 < x < 1. You probably worked that out earlier. Exercise 3.5.2. Show that (0, 1) is open in R and that [0, 1/2) is open in [0, 1] but not open in R. The dierence between < and is therefore pretty important. The next proposition strikes some people as unnecessary. They are wrong.
78
Proposition 3.5.1. In any metric space X, any open ball B is open in X. Proof: B is an open ball and is therefore B (a), for some a X and for some R+ . We need to show that for any b B (a), there is an open ball B (b) B (a), to comply with the denition of an open set. We have b B (a), so d(a, b) < . Put = d(a, b). Then R+ . Now I have to show that every point in B (b) is in B (a) and I shall be done. So, for any x B (b), I have d(a, x) d(a, b) + d(b, x) from the triangle inequality. But d(b, x) < since x B (b) and + d(b, a) = from the denition of , so d(a, x) < and x B (a). It is important to see that this really does need proof: people who think otherwise are being conned by the language. They think that because we call an open ball open it must therefore be an open set. It is said that Abraham Lincoln, while giving a stump address to drum up votes was asked by some wiseacre If you call a dawgs tail a laig, how many laigs has a dawg got? The answer Lincoln gave is a good one: A dog still has four legs, because calling a tail a leg doesnt make it one. This is rather an important and easily overlooked fact. Many people will try to take advantage of your innocence by changing the names of things and expecting you to jump to conclusions; if you dont think a bit, this will work. Half of standard management theory depends on this12 . We also have two useful and indeed central propositions: Proposition 3.5.2. The intersection of two sets A, B, both open in a metric space X, is open in X. Proof: We need to show that for any point x in A B, if A, B are both open in X, then there is an open ball B (x) contained in A B, that is contained
And the other half consists of changing the function and structure while preserving the name to make you think they havent done anything. An example of the rst trick is promoting Teachers training Institutions and calling them Universities. This was used to double the number of University students in Australia almost overnight. Of course, the students didnt learn anything dierent, but now they get degrees instead of diplomas. And an example of the second trick is happening curently: they call this place a University but are trying to make sure we make money for the country. We used to pursue truth and money was a happy by-product; increasingly we are being required to pursue cash and sod the truth. This is not a good idea, although it looks good to bureaucrats who are parasitic on those who actually produce anything. Ah, we are in the hands of the eunuchs, and there is little hope.
12
3.5. OPEN SETS
79
in both A and B. Since A is open in X and x A, R+ , B (x) A and since B is open in X and x B, R+ , B (x) B. Then put = min{, }. Since B (x) B (x) A, and B (x) B (x) B, it follows that B (x) A B. Proposition 3.5.3. If {Uj : j J} is a collection of subsets of a metric space X, each open in X, then Uj
jJ
is open in X
Proof: We need to show that for any x jJ Uj , there is some open ball B (x) jJ Uj . But if x jJ Uj , then by denition of the union, there is at least one j J with x Uj . Since this Uj is open in X, there is some R+ such that B (x) Uj . Then it follows that B (x) jJ Uj . Exercise 3.5.3. Does this still work if J = ? Exercise 3.5.4. Find an innite collection of open subsets in R and show the union is open. Find an innite collection of open subsets of R the intersection of which is not open. Hint: show that a single point is not open in R. There are two other central propositions which are so easy I shall let you prove them: Proposition 3.5.4. The empty subset is open in X for any metric space X. Proposition 3.5.5. Any metric space X is open in X. You need to be sure you can replicate these proofs. It ought to go without saying that I dont want the things memorised, and I dont care if your words are dierent, as long as the ideas are right and the arguments sound13 . I give these proofs as examples of the kind of reasoning I expect of you. You will nd almost identical arguments in Simmons, An Introduction to Toplogy and Modern Analysis and I shant therefore give many more examples. From now on I shall mostly expect you to work out proofs for yourself and if stuck do some reading, possibly o the internet. Given the above properties we have the following:
The word was sent down from Cambridge to the Public Schools of Britain in the late nineteenth century saying that entrants to the Cambridge Examination did not need to present the proofs of Euclid in the words of Euclid. It suced that the logic was correct. Another example of school teachers trying to ritualise things and kill thought. I am told they have improved.
13
80
Theorem 3.5.1. For any pair of metric spaces X and Y and any map f :X Y, XY
f
is continuous
i V Y, V open in Y f 1 (V ) open in X
Proof: We have to go two ways. First I show that if f is continuous then it must pull back open sets in Y to open sets in X. So suppose f is continuous and V Y is open in Y . Put U = f 1 V . Then certainly f is continuous at every point of U . So for any a U , f (a) V and since V is open in Y , there is some open ball B (f (a)) V , and since f is continuous at a, there is an open ball B (a) with f (B (a)) B (f (a)). Since f (B (a)) B (f (a)) it follows that B (a) U . Since this holds for every a U , U is a union of open balls and is therefore open by earlier results. Now I have to show that if f pulls back every open set V in Y to an open set U in X, then it must be continuous at every point a X. For any a, and for any open ball B (f (a)), B (f (a)) is an open set in Y and is hence pulled back to some open set U containing a X. But if a U and U is open then there is some B (a) U . And since U = f 1 B (f (a)) it follows that f (B (a)) B (f (a)), so f is continuous at a. Remark 3.5.2. Note that this gives us a global characterisation of continuity. And for the sake of your examination performance, dont get confused and think that continuous maps must take open sets to open sets. Exercise 3.5.5. Find a continuous map from R2 to R that takes every open set in R2 to an open set in R, and nd another that doesnt Another, complementary idea: Denition 3.5.3. A subset A of a metric space X is said to be closed in X i X\A is open in X. Exercise 3.5.6. Show that if A and B are closed in X, so is A B, and that if Aj : j J is a collection of subsets of X each of which is closed in X, then Aj
jJ
is closed in X. Does it matter if J = ? You might feel slightly cheated because we havent said anything about limits of sequences in metric spaces. There again you might be quite glad we
3.5. OPEN SETS
81
havent. I shall say a little bit about them later, but in fact we dont need them for most of what we want. The reason is that the idea of not tearing can be captured fully by means of open sets and the idea of a limit can be captured by closed sets. In order to give you the idea, a sequence of denitions and exercises will clarify things. Denition 3.5.4. If A is a subspace of a metric space X, the interior of A, written A, is the union of all open sets U contained in A. Denition 3.5.5. If A is a subspace of a metric space X, the closure of A in X, written A, is the intersection of every closed subset of X containing A. Exercise 3.5.7. Show that the interior of A is open, and the closure of A is closed, in X. Exercise 3.5.8. Show that f : X Y is continuous i whenever V is closed in Y , f 1 (V ) is closed in X. Denition 3.5.6. If A is a subspace of a metric space X, a point a is called a closure point of A i a A\A. Exercise 3.5.9. Show that in R2 the x-axis is closed in R2 . What is its closure? What is its interior? Exercise 3.5.10. What is the closure of the open unit ball in R2 ? What is the set of closure points? If we take X = [0, 1] with the usual metric and A = {x [0, 1] : n Z+ , x = 1/n} say what the closure points of A are. Exercise 3.5.11. What are the closure points of the x-axis in R2 ? Exercise 3.5.12. If f : X Y is continuous and A is any subset of X, show that if a is a closure point of A, then f (a) is a closure point of f (A), or is in f (A). Exercise 3.5.13. Show that a is in the closure of A i every open set containing a contains points of A. Exercise 3.5.14. Prove that A is open in X i A =A, and A is closed in X i A = A Now we have the following interesting result: Proposition 3.5.6. Two metrics d and e on the same non-empty set X are equivalent i the subsets of X which are open in X in the metric d are also open in the metric e and vice-versa.
82
Proof: From an earlier result the metrics are equivalent i the identity map is continuous in both directions. The result follows. Remark 3.5.3. This makes the arguments required to show that the L1 , L and euclidean (L2 ) metrics on R2 are equivalent very easy. Try doing them again if necessary.
3.6
Sequences in Metric Spaces
The idea of a limit is one of the great ideas of Western Mathematics. No other culture produced anything like this. You can nd some of the ideas which evolved into the notion of a limit in the works of Archimedes. Our modern formulation does owe a lot to the Arabs who wrote extensively on Algebra (at a time when their civilisation was way ahead of Europe) but combining algebra and geometry happened in the work of DesCartes in France, and it was the development of this which led to the intuitive notion of a limit in seventeenth century Europe, and in the nineteenth century into the formal denition we now use. Most cultures found the concept of innity baing, some avoided it and some wrote philosophical drivel about it. It was our own culture which, over the course of millennia, actually tamed it. I dont think you should be particularly proud of this or feel personally superior to people from cultures which didnt hit on these ideas. That would be like feeling superior to Confucius or Caesar or Cetawayo because they didnt have mobile phones. What you should feel is gratitude to some very smart cookies for having done some very hard thinking, and which has (as a by-product) made your lives very much easier14 , and an obligation to understand the ideas yourself. The reason you are far richer than most africans or bangla-deshis or chinese is not any inherent virtue in you, it is because as English speaking people you are culturally much closer to Sir Isaac Newton than they are, and have therefore picked up on the consequences of his work including the industrial revolution. My job is to get across to you the kind of thinking which accomplished these things, and yours is to maintain and if possible extend that tradition. There are still lots of interesting things to be thought about in an honest and careful manner. I ought to ask you to construct the next two denitions, since they are a natural extension of the idea of the limit of a sequence in R: Denition 3.6.1. A sequence in a metric space X is a map s : N X.
14
And which led to your mobile phone
3.6. SEQUENCES IN METRIC SPACES We tend to write sn instead of s(n) for no very good reason. Denition 3.6.2. A sequence s in a metric space X has a limit R+ , N N, n N, n>N i
83
s(n) B ( )
Denition 3.6.3. If a sequence s has a limit , then we say s converges to . Exercise 3.6.1. Prove that in a metric space, the limit of a sequence is unique. A metric space can have holes in it. Very, very small holes. Take the rational numbers Q as an example. Take the sequence 1, 1.4, 1.41, 1.414, 1.41421356237309504880168872421, I get these terms by taking the square root of two to an increasing number of decimal places. Clearly I have a nice simple rule for generating any term in the series, so the sequence is well dened. Equally clearly it would converge to 2 if the sequence were in the reals. Since each term has only a nite number of non-zero digits in it, each term is a rational number. (I could have written it as: 14 141 1414 14142 1 , , , , , ) 1 10 100 1000 10000 Equally clearly this sequence doesnt converge to a rational number since 2 R (which I hope you all know and can prove)15 . Since every subset of a metric space is a metric space, I could take R\{0} which is pretty much R but has had the origin ripped out and thrown away. The sequence s(n) = 1/(n + 1) would surely converge to zero if it was there to be converged to but there is no limit to this sequence. Bummer. Spaces which have holes in are fundamentally dierent from those which dont, and so we need to be able to tell if a space has any holes in it. R\{0} and R2 \{0} each have one hole, Q has rather a lot. In fact more holes than points16 . What we need is a hole detector. We have one and it is called a cauchy sequence. It doesnt quite detect holes, it is a sequence which will converge always to a limit if there is anything there for it to converge to. And if there isnt, its a hole.
If not, ask your lecturer. If this has you worried, so it should. Ask your lecturer if it is totally obscure. Naturally when I say your lecturer, I mean your other lecturer. If this course is a monstrous stu up and everybody fails, each lecturer will cheerfully blame the other.
16 15
84
Denition 3.6.4. A cauchy sequence in a metric space (X, d) is a sequence s in X satisfying: R+ , N N, n, m N, n, m > N d(s(n), s(m)) <
Exercise 3.6.2. Translate into English or pictures or both. Note that it is saying something about the points piling up, closer and closer to each other as you go further down the sequence Cauchy was one of those smart cookies mentioned earlier. Google him, in a reverential sort of way17 . Then the next proposition is the core of the business: Proposition 3.6.1. If a sequence s in a metric space X converges, then it is a cauchy sequence. Proof: Suppose we have some particular s and you give me a , demanding that I supply you with an N such that any two points s(n), s(m) from further down in the sequence than s(N ) must be within of each other. Then I halve your to get and nd the N such that if we are at s(n) for n > N , then we are within of , the limit of the sequence. Now if both s(n) and s(m) are within of , they are within 2 = of each other by the triangle inequality. This means that if we have a cauchy sequence, I can take, for any R+ an open ball in the space which contains all but a nite number of the points of the sequence. I can therefore take a series of balls, and I can make them closed balls by taking the closure of the open balls, with the radii being, say, 1/n for n Z+ . Since each of these balls must intersect every other one in a non-empty set, (the intersection of any two must also contain all but a nite number of the s(n)), it is reasonable to ask about the intersection of the whole lot. It must certainly be a closed set. If the cauchy sequence has a limit, , then the intersection must be the single point , Exercise 3.6.3. Prove this claim. and if the cauchy sequence does not converge then the intersection must be empty. Exercise 3.6.4. prove this claim. There is your hole.
This is a joke. Most bright people are not very reverential towards others and dont care much for it being directed to them either. The exceptions are sad and deeply insecure folk whom you should pity.
17
3.6. SEQUENCES IN METRIC SPACES
85
Denition 3.6.5. A metric space X is complete i every cauchy sequence has a limit. That is, complete spaces dont have holes in them. Exercise 3.6.5. Show carefully that Q and R2 \{0} are not complete with the usual metric. And now, as they used to say in the Monty Python sketches,, for something completely dierent. Exercise 3.6.6. In the space of functions C 0 ([0, 1], R) with the L1 metric, is the sequence of function sn (x) = xn a cauchy sequence? Does the sequence have a limit? Returning to rather less weird spaces, Exercise 3.6.7. Show that R is complete with the usual metric. Show that the cartesian product of two complete spaces is complete. Deduce that Rn is complete with the usual euclidean metric.
3.6.1
Fixed points of continuous maps
It is not obvious that this is important, but some maps of spaces into themselves have xed points and some dont. A point x X is said to be xed under f : X X i f (x) = x. Obviously there are maps which have xed points, and maps which dont, in general. The identity map has every point of X xed. The shift map from Rn to itself which adds any denite non-zero vector a to each x, that is fa (x) = x + a, doesnt have a single one. The applications of this idea of xed points of maps are quite surprising and will boggle your mind. (I hope you enjoy having your mind boggled, its one of those things that mathematicians do and staid, responsible bureaucrats hate. So if having your mind boggled really upsets you, go for something other than Mathematics.) We have, before the mind-boggling begins: Theorem 3.6.1 (Contraction Mapping Theorem). If X is a complete metric space and f : X X is a map satisfying: a [0, 1), x, y X, then f has a unique xed point. Proof: d(f (x), f (y)) a(d(x, y))
86
If a = 0 then we must have f (x) = f (y) always, in other words f sends all of X to a single point, and this point is xed and is unique. So we shall suppose a (0, 1). Take any point x X and construct a sequence x in X inductively by x(0) = x and n N, x(n + 1) = f (x(n)). Now we observe that s is a cauchy sequence. Put u = d(x, f (x)), the distance between the rst two terms in the sequence. The distance between x(n) and x(n + 1) is less than or equal to an u, between x(n + 1) and x(n + 2) is less than or equal to an+1 u, so the distance between x(n) and x(m), n < m, is less than or equal to u ak
k[n:m]
The sum is certainly less than the innite sum which is an /(1 a). And it is easy to see that for a given R+ , we can nd the required N N to ensure that n > N d(x(n), x(m)) < . Since X is complete, there is a limit of the sequence in X, call it . Then it is easy to see that f ( ) = and that does not depend on the initial choice of x, and that x is the only xed point of f . Exercise 3.6.8. Fill in the details of the above proof. Remark 3.6.1. This is sometimes called the Banach Fixed Point Theorem. Exercise 3.6.9. I didnt say that f has to be continuous. Is this an omission? Exercise 3.6.10. Big one! Potential Project Google Picards Existence Theorem or Picard-Lindelf Theorem. Work through the proof18 . Can you o see what metric space this is all happening in? There are other applications of the Contraction Mapping Theorem (a map which satises the condition of the theorem is called a contraction, for reasons which should be pretty obvious) but the above is quite enough to justify all the work you have put in to this unit so far19 . There are other xed point results, some of which are astonishing. For example, if X is I 3 with the usual metric, any continuous map from X to itself has at least one xed point. This means that if you have a match-box full of putty, and you take the putty out and stretch it, compress it, tie lovers knots in it (but do not tear it) and if you then stu it back in the match box, there is at least one point in the putty which nishes up at the same location as its starting point.
18 19
Do not confuse with the Picard Little Theorem, which is smaller. Including the algebra.
3.7. WHAT IS A REAL NUMBER? This also holds for the general cube I n , n Z+ +.
87
Exercise 3.6.11. Prove it for n = 1. It is proved in algebraic topology courses, for all n Z+ +, in fourth year. You should think this surprising, hard to credit, but, if true, undeniably cool. Think about it until you can see the coolth.
3.7
What is a real number?
I am hoping that by now, John will have told you what natural numbers are along the general lines of the chapter of sets and logic, and also what an integer is, and what a rational number is. If not, skip this section, it will be too hard. The rst year treatment of the real numbers specied them by their critical properties, the axioms. There is a denite problem with this, which may not be immediately obvious, which is, how do you know there are any? If you take some set of objects and conrm the set has the right properties, all well and good. But if we just make a wish list of properties, a set of axioms, that the object or objects in which we are interested need to satisfy, how do we know there are any? It is said that the mathematician E.C. (Chris) Zeeman once wrote down a set of properties he wanted for a space to have, and proved quite a lot of things about objects satisfying these axioms, discovering eventually that there was exactly one and it contained a single point. He was lucky. There might not have been even one. So specifying axioms for a system does not guarantee that there is anything in the universe which does indeed satisfy them all20 . The rst thing I did with metric spaces was to show that what one would want to be a metric space really is one, and if you believe that R with the usual metric exists, then you can probably believe R2 also exists; its a cartesian product, and if we have a set theoretic axiom which ensures that if we have two sets we also have that their cartesian product is a set. So there are examples of metric spaces. If we list the axioms for the real numbers (a complete, ordered eld) then what we want is that there is pretty much exactly one thing satisfying those axioms. Less would be embarrassing and more would invite remark21 . Up to
I have stipulated that I am only interested in girls who are tall, skinny, long-leggetty, oversexed, teenage blondes with IQs over 150 who nd me irresistibly attractive. There is some reason for thinking this is currently the empty set. Twas not always thus. :-( 21 The upper classes in England feel the same way about hair and intelligence. They
20
88
date you havent actually got one. Although you nearly have. You may think of real numbers, up to a point, as innite strings of digits with a decimal point in there somewhere. This goes wrong if you take the real numbers 0.499999 and 0.50000000 . The distance between them is clearly zero so they are the same number. But they are dierent strings. So we have the serious embarrassment that some strings are out there on their own and some have twins. Exercise 3.7.1. Show that the distance between 0.499999 and 0.50000000 is zero. Exercise 3.7.2. Can you say exactly which strings come with twins22 , both of which represent the same number? And which ones dont? We could dene R in terms of innite strings, although it is rather clunky and not exactly obvious why some get twinned and others dont. Ugly, ugly, ugly!!!! Recall that we set up the natural numbers from nothing together with set builder rules. So if you believe the empty set exists and that you can put brackets around a bunch of names to get a set, then you have to believe in the natural numbers. The Integers we got from the natural numbers, so once you believed the natural numbers exist, you have to believe the integers do, too. And in the integers we can do subtraction, which is, of course, why we invented them23 . And we can construct the rational numbers from the integers by taking equivalence classes of pairs, so if we believe in the integers, then we have to believe in the rational numbers. Which we invented so we could do division (except by zero). All the properties of the integers, some of them quite astonishing, arise out of the denitions, likewise the rational numbers. Now the real line looks a lot like the rational line, but the rational line is not complete, it has holes in it. The idea here is to get to the real numbers from the rationals by lling in the holes. And how do we dene a hole? By a cauchy sequence.
believe that too little would be embarrassing and too much would invite remark. 22 The evil twin is clearly the one with all the 9s since they take up more space. We can just write 0.5 and rely on anyone who feels the need to pad out as far as they want with zeros. Forever if they are game. But 0.49999999 requires some extra explanation (equivalent to announcing Its nines from here on out). 23 Kronecker said that the integers were the work of God, all else is the work of man. I dont believe God had anything to do with the integers, the natural numbers, or for that matter anything else in Mathematics. We invented the lot. It is just possible that God created the Universe, but, like LaPlace, I have no need of that hypothesis.
3.7. WHAT IS A REAL NUMBER?
89
Exercise 3.7.3. Construct a denition of equivalence of cauchy sequences when they either converge to the same limit or would converge to the same limit if there was one. Using your denition, show that the sequence 0 5 0 0 5 0 0 0 5 5 , + , + + , + + + , 10 10 100 10 100 1000 10 100 1000 10000 (the sequence of partial sums obtained from the innite decimal string 0.50000 ) and the sequence 4 4 9 4 9 9 4 9 9 9 , + , + + , + + + , 10 10 100 10 100 1000 10 100 1000 10000 (partial sums of 0.4999999 ) are equivalent.
Spoiler Warning! Do not read on until you have tried the last exercise.
The last exercise was another opportunity to do some creative Mathematics by taking the uy idea of cauchy sequences which would converge to the same thing if there were anything there to converge to and nailing it down in algebra. Now I shall do it the conventional way. Denition 3.7.1. Two cauchy sequences x and y in a metric space X are equivalent i R+ , N N, n N, n>M d(x(n), y(n)) <
Exercise 3.7.4. Show that the relation of equivalence on cauchy sequences is an equivalence relation24 . Exercise 3.7.5. Show that if x and y are equivalent cauchy sequences in A and if x converges to then y also converges to . Now we are ready to dene R: Denition 3.7.2. If denotes the equivalence relation dened above, R is the set of equivalences of cauchy sequences on Q. Remark 3.7.1. This may boggle your minds a bit. R sounds as if it should be humungous. It certainly sounds complicated. If you feel this way it is because you are focussing on the language instead of the ideas. An equivalence class of cauchy sequences may contain a lot of elements, but it is a single thing, and that thing looks a lot like either a point of Q or a hole in Q. Think about
24
Dogs tails again.
90
this until it seems natural and reasonable. This will change the way you look at the world, which is why Mathematics is good fun and also why it is useful. If you dont enjoy having your ideas turned upside down, then Mathematics is not for you. Take up knitting25 . That tells us that we should believe in the existence of R if we believe in Q. And all this follows from just believing in the empty set and the ability to put braces around a bunch of names. But wait, all this does is to provide us with a set of things. R is much more than that, it also involves being able to add and multiply the things; also to have a metric on the set. If we cant recover those, we are wambling. Exercise 3.7.6. Show that two cauchy sequences in Q can be added to get another cauchy sequence in Q. Exercise 3.7.7. Show that if x1 and x2 are equivalent cauchy sequences in Q and another pair of cauchy sequences y1 and y2 are also equivalent, then x1 + y1 and x2 + y2 are also equivalent. Note that the + sign here is essentially ordinary addition in Q carried over pointwise to cauchy sequences, or in light of the last exercise, equivalence classes of cauchy sequences. Denition 3.7.3. Addition in R is dened by choosing any representative cauchy seqence in the class that is one element of R, choosing any representative cauchy sequence in a second equivalence class that is a second element of R, and adding the cauchy sequences (pointwise) in Q. The equivalence class containing the sum cauchy sequence is the sum of the two elements of R. Then the exercises show that this determines a unique equivalence class of cauchy sequences in Q, that is the map + : R R R is well dened and does not depend upon the various choices made. Exercise 3.7.8. Show that we can also subtract equivalence classes of cauchy sequences in Q. Exercise 3.7.9. Big one: project material! Show we can also dene multiplication and (except by zero) division in R, show that there is a 1-1 map from Q to R which preserves addition, multiplication and order. Prove
This may not work, you have to try out new things in knitting too. Its hard to nd human activities which dont involve a certain amount of learning new ideas. Thats because we are human beings. Tigers have big claws and teeth for killing their prey, birds have wings for ying and human beings have big brains for learning things. I have found using my brain makes me happier, and this might work for you too. Give it a try.
25
3.8. QUOTIENT SPACES
91
that with these rules R is an ordered eld. Finally prove that R is complete, which is to say every cauchy sequence in R converges. The last part involving as it does cauchy sequences of equivalence classes of cauchy sequences in Q may make you a bit nervous. Be brave!
3.8
Quotient Spaces
I rather hope that by now John has told you about quotient groups. I am pretty sure that he will have told you about the group (actually ring) n Z\{0}, Zn = Z nZ
This looks rather as if we can divide groups by subgroups or rings by ideals26 and get another group or ring. Hence the name quotient group/ring. This is almost correct. We can do something similar with spaces. At this point, let your imagination loose and try visualising things. I take the metric space consisting of the closed unit disc D2 in R2 . I observe that the unit circle S 1 is a subset. I now ask, what is the space D2 S1 which is obtained by crushing the subspace S 1 to a single point? I dont want to crush any other points of D2 , only those on the boundary. If M is this mystery space, I claim that there is a continuous map D2 M which is onto, takes S 1 to a point, and is 1-1 on D2 \S 1 . I call the map because such things are called projections. And is the Greek equivalent of p which is the rst letter of rojection. Exercise 3.8.1. Identify the magical mystery metric space M ! Let us generalise this. Suppose X is any metric space, A X is a proper subspace, and I have an equivalence relation on the points of A. In the last example, X was D2 , A was S 1 , and was dened by making every point of A equivalent to every other point. Then I shall want to talk about glueing together all points which are equivalent.
If John has not done this (and he may think its too hard for you!) do not panic. I will tell you when to panic. Quotient spaces are quite a lot easier than quotient groups or quotient rings.
26
92
Example 3.8.1. Let X = I 2 the unit square in R2 . Let A consist of the left and right hand edges of the square, and dene an equivalence on this set by saying that every point (0, t)T is equivalent to the opposite point (1, t)T and also to itself, and to nothing else. I dene the quotient space I 2 / to have points all those points of X\A, together with the equivalence classes of . This gives me a set, and in this particular case another magical mystery metric space M . Exercise 3.8.2. Dene the relation properly and show it is an equivalence. Exercise 3.8.3. Identify the new mmm space M . If in serious doubt, take a rectangle of paper and do the glueing of the shorter sides with staples or actual real glue. I have, in eect, glued all the points down one edge of the square to the corresponding points on the opposite edge. I hope you could do the last exercise. Exercise 3.8.4. On I 2 again, take a new equivalence relation on the same subset, the vertical edges, by glueing the point (0, t)T to the point (1, 1 t)T for every t [0, 1]. Identify the resulting space. Dene the natural metric on this space. I leave it to you to decide what natural means. Again, do it with a rectangle of paper and some glue if you havent the faintest idea what Im talking about. Exercise 3.8.5. Conrm that the last space has boundary a circle. You will need to dene what you mean by boundary. Exercise 3.8.6. You had to decide what natural meant. Here is a sug gestion: We require that the map X X/ should be continuous and that means it has to pull back open sets in X/ to open sets in X. We can ensure this in an elegant way by stipulating that U is open in X/ i 1 (U ) is open in X. This does not give us a metric on X/ but it does give us a collection of open sets. These have to be exactly the open sets of the natural metric on X/ . Does this work? Check it out in particular cases. Conrm that these open sets are closed under nite intersections and arbitrary unions. Exercise 3.8.7. Dene a metric on the space [0, 1] {0, 1} which glues the endpoints of the unit interval together. Identify the space.
93
Exercise 3.8.8. I rather arbitrarily changed the square into a rectangle for the purposes of doing experiments with glue and paper. Why? The above has been largely intuitive, quite entertaining but it might leave you wondering, is this Mathematics? The answer is, it will be if we can dene everything properly27 . Exercise 3.8.9. Dene the term quotient space.
Spoiler Warning! Do not read on until you have tried the last two exercises.
Denition 3.8.1. If there is a pair of metric spaces X, Y and a map A Y such that f is continuous, 1-1, onto and has f 1 also continuous, then f is said to be a homeomorphism and the spaces X and Y are said to be homeomorphic Remark 3.8.1. Dont ignore the e in homeomorphism. The opportunity to confuse homeomorphisms and homomorphisms (which I hope you met with John) is great, and to be guarded against. Exercise 3.8.10. Show that on the collection of all metric spaces, homeomorphism is an equivalence relation. Exercise 3.8.11. Show that the space I 2 and the space x1 x2 R2 : 0 y 1, 0 x 10
f
(with the metric inherited from R2 ) are homeomorphic. Exercise 3.8.12. Show that the unit circle S 1 which was dened as the set of points in R2 at distance one from the origin is homeomorphic to the space x1 x2 R3 : x2 + x2 = 1, x3 = 0 1 2 x3
This answer presupposes a few things. Conspicuously, that Mathematics is the construction of high precision languages which can be used for reasoning about complicated matters. The matters may themselves be absolutely anything, but the more signicant are derived from the real world about us. In the main, thus far, the things we are interested in from the world have been mainly physical matters, but there seems to be no reason why they should be so restricted, except for the complexity of the biological or psychological or social worlds. It makes sense to do the easier things rst, and when we consider what is done in topology, we see that we are investigating qualitative properties of physical objects. This may give us some hope for being able to eventually understand matters of a deeper nature. Work continues...
27
94
Intuitively, a circle is a circle, and sticking it into R2 or R3 doesnt change that. Exercise 3.8.13. Show that the space [0, 1] {0, 1} obtained by glueing the endpoints of the unit interval together is homeomorphic to S 1 . It should be clear that if two spaces are homeomorphic, we regard them as the same space, and this allows us to distinguish between the intrinsic space itself and the larger space in which they may (or may not) be sitting. Denition 3.8.2. A topology on a set X is a collection T of subsets of X satisfying the conditions: 1. T 2. X T 3. A, B T AB T
4. For any indexing set J, and for any collection {Uj : j J} of subsets of X, Uj T j J, Uj T
jJ
Denition 3.8.3. If (X, d) is a metric space, the open sets form a topology and this topology is said to be derived from the metric d. Exercise 3.8.14. Conrm that the open sets of a metric space do form a topology. Denition 3.8.4. If X is a metric space, and A X a proper subspace, and if is an equivalence relation on A, then the quotient space, if it exists, has the set of points Y X\A A/ , where A/ denotes the equivalence classes of , a map : X Y dened by x X\A (x) = x x A (x) = [x] where [x] denotes the equivalence class of x. There is a topology on Y dened by stipulating V is open in Y i 1 (V ) is open in X. If there is a metric d on Y such that the given topology is identical to that derived from the metric, then we say (Y, d) is the quotient space of X by .
95
Exercise 3.8.15. Go through the above denition carefully, making sure it is logically intact, and verify that the intuitive idea of gluing subspaces and collapsing subspaces into points is made rigorous. This last denition should be a great triumph because it allows us to take a nice idea of how to treat spaces, which accord well with out intuitions, and glue bits together so as to get new spaces. There is only one diculty. The denition does not assert that the glueing process always produces a metric space, it only guarantees a topology and it is conceivable that we may get a topology for which there is absolutely no metric whatever. This can actually happen. Example 3.8.2. Let X consist of R {0, 1}. This gives us basically two copies of R. Dene on A = R\{0} {0, 1} by saying that for every x R\{0}, (x, 0) (x, 1). We also need to have every point equivalent to itself of course. What we are doing is glueing every point on one copy of R to the corresponding point on the other copy of R, except the two zeros which do not get glued at all. The result looks exactly like R except that it has two zeros. Bummer. Exercise 3.8.16. Dene the equivalence of the last example carefully, and describe the open sets of the quotient space. Prove that there is no metric with the same open sets. Bummer squared. In fact, BummerBummer . The next chapter gives a way of proceeding despite this set back. We manage by generalising away from metric spaces in a way which may shock you, enrage you or exhilarate you28
28
Or all three simultaneously. Or some subset, I hope non-empty.
96
Chapter 4 Topological Spaces and Manifolds

4.1 Introduction
At the end of the last chapter we came across two things that while being reasonably spacy were not metric spaces. One was a function space, and it looked hard to put a metric on it, and the other looked like R with two zeros, and which went wrong because it had two dierent points which had zero distance between them. You should have attempted the exercise which required you to show that there was a topology but no metric from which it could be derived; if you got stuck I shall do it shortly. This leaves us with a problem: it is clear that sometimes quotient spaces of metric spaces are metric spaces and sometimes they are something more primitive. We could try to nd conditions on glueings or collapsings of metric spaces which guarantee that the result is a metric space, or we could go straight to a more primitive notion of spaciness. This last is what I shall do1 . What we need is something with some idea of proximity which would allow us to distinguish continuous maps from maps which tear, so we have to have some conception of something where it makes sense to say that we are tearing or not. Given this, then with any luck we shall be able to recover enough of the idea of proximity which is the essence of spaciness. The standard approach is to observe that so long as we have a topology, we need nothing more. So the fundamental notion of spaciness is encompassed in the following denitions.
1
Because it is an awful lot easier.
97
98
CHAPTER 4. TOPOLOGICAL SPACES AND MANIFOLDS
4.2
Topological Spaces
I repeat myself for the sake of having all the right denitions close to each other. Denition 4.2.1. A topology on a set X is a collection T of subsets of X satisfying the conditions: 1. T 2. X T 3. A, B T AB T
4. For any indexing set J, and for any collection {Uj : j J} of subsets of X, j J, Uj T Uj T
jJ
Denition 4.2.2. A pair (X, T ) consisting of a set X and a topology T on X is called a topological space. Denition 4.2.3. If (X, T ) and (Y, T ) are topological spaces, a map X Y is continuous i whenever V T , f 1 (V ) T . It is worth remarking that most books on General or Point-Set Topology start o with these axioms, leaving the reader wondering where they come from and what the point of them is. The rest of their book is an answer to the second question which does not actually mention the second question, and completely refuses to acknowledge in any way the rst question. I can think of four possible explanations for this shameful neglect, the rst being that the authors have never asked themselves either question being content to follow their own teachers obediently without ever asking any questions themselves. This leaves the innocent reader with the suspicion that mathematicians are natural slaves who will do whatever someone in authority tells them, no matter how apparently pointless. There is some evidence for this explanation. The second explanation is that they think that working out the reasons for having those axioms is your job, and one which might give you hours of interesting thought of which they would not wish to deprive you. I leave you to decide for yourself how plausible this explanation sounds. The third explanation is that they wrote the book to show what smartarses they are and they dont actually expect anyone to read it. There is a lot
f
4.2. TOPOLOGICAL SPACES
99
of evidence to support this explanation. And nally it is possible that the prevailing culture of Mathematics at the present time is that of trying to look as much like a sort of transcendental Sherlock Holmes who is not actually given to human impulses as possible. A sort of look at me, I am superhuman. Well, not human anyway. A look at the writing of some of the notable mathematicians of the past suggests, if this explanation is correct, that this is a contemporary aberration2 .
4.2.1
Examples of Topological Spaces
It is obvious that every metric space is a topological space. The question is, are there any others? The exercise asking you to prove that there is at least one may have caused you some trouble, so I approach it rather obliquely. First, what is the simplest topological space? From the denition, there is nothing to prevent from being one: then T would be the set containing only the empty set. Then all the axioms for a topological space are satised. Exercise 4.2.1. Conrm this. The next most complicated space would have to be a single point. The only possible topology on it would contain two sets, the empty set and the whole set, the set consisting of the single point. Then the axioms are all satised again. This one is also a metric space of mind-numbing vapidity. Whether is a metric space is a matter of how exactly one denes a metric space. We could insist that a metric space has to be non-empty, but if one doesnt, it too can be a metric space, with the empty map giving the non-existent distances. Alternatively, I could have insisted that a topological space had to be non-empty. The choice is frankly frivolous, and is not worth spending time on. If we have a set consisting of two points, call them a, b then we have some
Leading to the conclusion that ninety percent of the mathematicians who ever lived are alive today. And most of them are bloody silly people. I dont say this is true, but I can see how people might suspect it. If you want to check on the recency of this strange custom, go and read some of the masters: you can nd Isaac Newtons Principia in the library, undoubtedly the most important book ever written. You can also nd Galileos books. You can nd on the internet a nice book written by William Kingdon Cliord and read it. It is quite accesssible and not very technical and shows how his mind worked. He was clearly smart but human and interested in things. There are plenty of other sources to convince you that most of the great thinkers of the past were very bright human beings who wrote in order to tell the reader things, not to esoterrorise them.
2
100
more possibilities. Let us list the rst topology: T1 = {, {a, b}} This is a topology and not a very exciting one. Exercise 4.2.2. Conrm this. Another possibility is T2 = {, {a, b}, {a}} Again, we need to conrm that it is closed under unions and intersections; it suces to check them in pairs, since there are only a nite set of points to worry about. Exercise 4.2.3. Conrm T2 is a topology on {a, b}. Another, symmetrical, one is: T3 = {, {a, b}, {b}} and the last is T4 = {, {a, b}, {a}, {b}} Exercise 4.2.4. Conrm these are topologies. How many of these are metrisable, that is could come from a metric? The only possibility is that d(a, a) = d(b, b) = 0; d(a, b) > 0. Without loss of generality I can put d(a, b) = 1. This is certainly a metric. What are the open sets? If we take the open ball on a of radius 1/2, we see that the only element of the set B1/2 (a) is a. So {a} must be an open set. Likewise {b} is open in {a, b} with this metric. So topology T4 , is the only possibility. The others are topological spaces but not metric spaces for any possible metric. Denition 4.2.4. The discrete topology on any set X is the collection of all subsets of X. Exercise 4.2.5. Conrm that every set has the discrete topology, so every set can be turned into a topological space, and this topology is derived from the discrete metric. The converse, that every metric space gives rise to a discrete derived topology is, of course, false. Denition 4.2.5. A topology T on a set X is hausdor i x, y X, x = y U, V T , x U & y V & U V =
The picture tells the story: see gure 4.1.
4.2. TOPOLOGICAL SPACES
101
U x y V
Figure 4.1: The Hausdor property for a Topological Space.
Exercise 4.2.6. Translate the denition of a hausdor topology into English.
Proposition 4.2.1. The derived topology from a metric space is hausdor Proof: If there are no points or only one point in the space there is nothing to prove since the topologies are vacuously hausdor. Suppose therefore that there are two or more points in X. Then for any distinct points x, y X, put d(x, y), and /2 R+ . Then put U B (x) and put V B (y). Then x U and y V , and if z U V , we would have d(x, z) + d(z, y) < , contradiction. So U V = Now you can see that it is easy to prove that the result of glueing together two copies of the real line except at the origin gives a topological space which cannot arise from a metric, since all metric spaces must give rise to derived topologies which are hausdor. And the topology on the real line with two zeros is such that every open set containing one of the zeros intersects any open set containing the other zero in a non-empty set in the quotient space.
Exercise 4.2.7. Prove carefully the last sentence!
Exercise 4.2.8. How many distinct topologies are there on a space consisting of three points? How many are hausdor ? (Quick answer to the last part!)
102
4.2.2
The Product and Subspace Topologies
If X and Y are topological spaces, is there a natural topology to put on X Y ? We have an answer when both spaces are in fact metric spaces, we can put the product metric on the cartesian product, and that generates a unique topology. Denition 4.2.6. A base for a topology T on a set X is a collection B of elements of T such that every element of T is a union of elements of B. Exercise 4.2.9. Show that the open balls in a metric space are a base for the topology derived from the metric. Exercise 4.2.10. Show that in Rn we could in fact take the open balls having radius in Q and centred on points having all coordinates also in Q, and we would still have a base for the topology derived from the euclidean metric3 . In order to specify a topology, it suces to give a base (not basis!) for the topology. Suppose I have two spaces (X, T ) and (Y, T ). There are two projections x : X Y X and y : X Y Y . If I am to put a topology on X Y at the very least I shall want both projections to be continuous. Suppose 1 1 U T and V T . Then x (U ) and y (V ) must be open in X Y , and 1 1 their intersection x (U ) y (V ) must be open also. I want the topology on X Y to be as coarse as possible given that x and y 1 1 are continuous. I cant stipulate that only the intersections x (U ) y (V ) for U T and v T be in the product topology, because this wouldnt even be closed under unions. But I can ensure that I dont get anything in the product topology that isnt strictly necessary by dening: Denition 4.2.7. The product topology on X Y for topological spaces 1 1 (X, T ) and (Y, T ) has the subsets of X Y x (U ) y (V ) for U T and v T as a base. Exercise 4.2.11. Show that the product topology on the cartesian product of metric spaces is the same as that derived from the product metric. As well as products we need to think about subspaces. Denition 4.2.8. If (X, T ) is a topological space and A X is a subset, then the subset topology on A is the set T {A V : V T }.
Which would give us a countable base for the topology. When a topological space has a countable base it is often possible to do things with it which you cant do with more general spaces, so we love them.
3
4.3. MANIFOLDS Exercise 4.2.12. Show that this is a topology on A.
103
Exercise 4.2.13. If X is a metric space and A a subspace, show that the subspace topology of the derived topology on X is the same as the topology on the subspace derived from the inherited metric. Remark 4.2.1. I shall often, when talking about a topological space, refer to the elements of the topology as the open sets. This is sloppy, and I wouldnt dream of doing it if just about everyone else didnt do it. A large number of denitions for topological spaces now, with this convention, look exactly like their denitions for metric spaces: Denition 4.2.9. A subset A X of a topological space X is closed in X i X\A is open in X. Exercise 4.2.14. Copy out the denitions for interior and closure and make sure they make sense for topological spaces. Exercise 4.2.15. Dene the notion of limit in a topological space. Exercise 4.2.16. Show that a sequence in a topological space may have more than one limit.
4.2.3
Concluding Remarks about General Topology
There is rather a lot of what is called point set or general topology of the sort I have been doing in this section. Kelleys General Topology is a standard reference as is the early books of the mammoth Bourbaki Elements de Mathematique produced by a consortium of French mathematicians (but, happily, translated into English). I am covering only the very simplest bits. If you want to do serious Analysis, you will need much more. There are two main areas of application, to function spaces (Analysis) and to manifolds (Topology and Geometry). I shall stop here because I have done enough for present purposes and want to head o in the direction of manifolds.
4.3
Manifolds
It should not have escaped your attention, particularly if you have read much of Jerey Weeks book The Shape of Space, that there are quite a lot of rather nice interesting spaces, such as spheres, tori (ring doughnuts) the Klein bottle, and others I shall be coming to. Locally, these things look like Rn for
104
some positive integer n, but globally they seem dierent. Intuitively, it seems right to say that S 2 and R2 are dierent globally. Similarly, a torus (which is S 1 S 1 ) looks as though it couldnt be deformed into a sphere. We can now be more precise that that, we can declare that we are inclined to suspect that R2 , S 2 , and T 2 are not homeomorphic. Of course that isnt the same as being able to prove these results: they have the status of conjectures 4 , which sounds quite classy. Exercise 4.3.1. Prove that there is no homeomorphism between R1 and R2 . Concerning the last exercise, ones rst thought is that youd have to be mad to think there might be. The things look pretty dierent, right? I mean one is long and thin and the other is sort of at and two dimensional. Ha! Exercise 4.3.2. Show there is a bijection between R and R2 . Show that there is a bijection between R and Rn for any n Z+ . Exercise 4.3.3. Google space lling curves. What this shows is that your intuitions may need a bit of work. While it is true that there is no homeomorphism between S 2 and R2 , between S 2 and T 2 or between T 2 and R2 , it aint easy to prove these results. The reason we feel that it ought to be is because our geometric intuitions are very acute and go back to our earliest years. I remember many years ago watching my daughter in the bath when she was less than a year old. She had slipped a green plastic torus over her arm and was trying to pull it o sideways. Eventually she learnt that it had to come o the same way it had gone on. She was building up experience of the geometry of the object, and discovering that you cant put your arm through a balloon (unless you burst it) is something we all gured out at some point before we got to university5 . So something which you have been able to do from infancy must surely be simple, right? Like synthesising insulin or recognising a face you have seen before? Unless you are severely diabetic you can synthesise insulin, even cows can do it, but youd have a hard time telling someone how to do it in a laboratory, and there is not much point in asking a cow. And youd have a hard time proving that S 2 is not homeomorphic to R2 . Try it if you dont believe me. Remark 4.3.1. To do the next two exercises fully and rigorously is a considerable amount of work and leads to some interesting new ideas, but you may be able to make some headway with them.
4 5
A posh word for a guess. At least, I hope so.
4.3. MANIFOLDS
105
Exercise 4.3.4. Prove that S 1 is not homeomorphic to R. Hint: you need to nd some topological property that one has and the other hasnt. A topological property is something which is preserved by a homeomorphism. Exercise 4.3.5. If you didnt do it before, prove that R is not homeomorphic to R2 . Once you have accepted that proving the bleedin obvious can be a very hard job, you are ready to feel grateful for any small result. Most of the results that show spaces are not homeomorphic (from the Greek, meaning, roughly, the same shape) come from Algebraic Topology which you wont see until fourth year. The rst thing I want to do is to take the idea of a manifold, which is something that looks locally like Rn for some n Z+ , and make it precise. The n has to be the same for each part of the manifold, and in the particular case when n = 2 we call them 2-manifolds or surfaces. Examples are R2 itself, S 2 , the torus T 2 , the Klein bottle, and more complicated things like the two-holed torus. Related are manifolds with boundary, and some two dimensional examples are the closed disc D2 and the mbius strip. o Exercise 4.3.6. Dene the term surface. Now dene the term 2-manifold with boundary.
Spoiler Warning! Do not read on until you have tried the last exercise.
Denition 4.3.1. An open cover of a topological space X is a collection Uj : j J of sets which are open in X such that Uj
jJ
Denition 4.3.2. A topological space X is an n-manifold (for any n Z+ ) i 1. X is hausdor 2. The topology on X has a countable base 3. There is an open cover of X, Uj : j J, and for each j J, there is a map uj : Uj Rn which is a homeomorphism between Uj and the image of uj The open cover and collection of maps is called an atlas and each pair (uj , Uj ) is called a chart.
106
Exercise 4.3.7. Explain the terminology! You would only have got the rst two conditions if you cheated and googled the answer. This is a silly thing to do because it takes away all the fun. The axioms are there in order to stop things like the real line with two zeros being a manifold, and others that are just too damned big. Exercise 4.3.8. Take an uncountable number of copies of the unit interval and glue them together at the end points to give a very, very long line. I leave you to gure out how to dene this object properly. Now take an indexing set which is the power set of the real numbers, and take as many copies as that of the unit intervals and glue them together to make an even longer line. You will need some set theory to make this rigorous. Now decide if you want these things to be manifolds. I dont. Exercise 4.3.9. Prove that R is a 1-manifold. Prove that S 1 is another. Can you think of any more? Exercise 4.3.10. Prove that R2 is a 2-manifold. Prove that S 2 is another. Prove that S 1 S 1 is a third. Exercise 4.3.11. Prove that if X is an n-manifold and if Y is an mmanifold, then X Y is an n + m-manifold. Denition 4.3.3. The Right hand half of R2 is the set R2+ x1 x2 R2 : x1 0
Denition 4.3.4. A topological space X is a 2-manifold with boundary i it is a hausdor topological space with a countable base and there is an open cover Uj : j J of X and a set of maps uj : Uj R2+ such that each uj is a homeomorphism onto its image. If the images never intersect the y-axis then the boundary is empty, in which case it is just an ordinary manifold. If they do, any point x X taken by some uj to the y-axis is said to be a boundary point. Denition 4.3.5. The set of points x X taken by some uj to the y-axis in R2+ is called the boundary of the manifold. Remark 4.3.2. If two open sets in the cover, U1 , U2 intersect and if u1 takes some point x in U1 U2 to the y axis, then wed like to believe that u2 does too. The denition I have given does not actually require it, but our intuitions tell us (I hope) that this really ought to hold.
4.3. MANIFOLDS Exercise 4.3.12. Does it?
107
Exercise 4.3.13. Show that the closed unit disc in R2 is a 2-manifold with boundary, and that the boundary is the bounding circle. This should convince you that mucking about with manifolds really is Mathematics. You might wonder what the point of this mucking about actually is. There are two answers, the rst (being sucient for Pure mathematicians) is that it is good clean fun and keeps you from hanging about street corners and annoying the citizenry. The second answer is more serious6 and is that our attempts to describe the physical universe require us to use the idea of a manifold. There is, as Jerey Weeks suggests, some grounds for thinking that the universe we inhabit is a three (or possibly four) dimensional manifold, and it would be nice to know something about its global shape. A more prosaic answer is that when we try to describe a physical system we frequently do so by making a set of measurements on it. The number of measurements we make can vary from as few as one or two to as many as a few million. If there are more than one of them, it may well happen that they are not independent: knowing some might allow you to work out at least a limited range of possibilities for others. We can often say something about the constraints, and very often the state space of the system is a manifold. In mechanical engineering, linkages between components often accomplish this, but they come up all through Engineering and Physics. Thus if there are two numbers x and y and they satisfy the constraint x2 + y 2 = 1 we get the unit circle. Obviously the constraints we get in general are more complicated than this, but you can see how a nice simple constraint on two variables (to use the old fashioned jargon) gives us a manifold. This situation is very general, which is why manifolds keep arising in Engineering and Physics. We might have vector elds on them for example which are essentially local laws saying something about what the time development of a state in the state space can be. You wouldnt know it, but I am talking about systems of ordinary dierential equations here, which are a whole lot more interesting than you might think from your rst year experiences.
4.3.1
Surfaces obtained by glueings
For the rest of the course I shall concentrate on surfaces. These are much easier than higher dimensional manifolds, in fact we can say how many of them there are, or classify them. In this classication, we regard two 2-manifolds which are homeomorphic as being the same, or we say we are classifying up
6
Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your attitude to life. I am not sure.
108
to homeomorphism. You can nd a nice description of Conways7 ZIP, the Zero Information Proof at the back of Jerey Weeks book. Zipping things together is Conways term for glueing, and we shall now be looking at the basic ideas of the argument. As usual, the idea is that you should do the work8 , so much of this is in the form of exercises. Preliminaries Exercise 4.3.14. Show that a map from R2 to R2 can be regarded as two maps from R2 to R, and that the former is continuous i both the latter are. Exercise 4.3.15. Take the sector of the unit disc lying between an angle of /4 from the positive x-axis. Now take the quarter of a square with vertices at (1, 1)T which also lies between an angle of /4 from the positive xaxis. Show that these are homeomorphic. Hint, you need to contract along radii by an amount which depends on the angle. Exercise 4.3.16. Show that any two rectangles in R2 are homeomorphic, and that any two circles in R2 are homeomorphic. Exercise 4.3.17. Deduce from the last few exerises that the unit square (together with its inside) is homeomorphic to the unit disc. And that the square (without its inside) is homeomorphic to S 1 Exercise 4.3.18. Show that any two triangles (both with or both without their insides) in R2 are homeomorphic. Exercise 4.3.19. Show that any triangle is homeomorphic to a square. These results should accord with your intuitions about deforming things without tearing. Here are some more:
Conway is a great, wild, supercool character who is usually thought of as an algebraist. His proof demonstrates that classifying people, particularly mathematicians, is a lot harder than classifying surfaces. 8 Some students look at the amount of work expected of them at University and decide that nobody could possibly expect that amount, so they asume it is some sort of obscure joke and dont do any. They are wrong about this. It isnt a joke, its a sieve. The odd supersmart student does do them. The merely bright do most of them. The average do about half, and the incurably dumb dont do any. This makes setting examinations very easy, which is good. For us. Oh, and the reason that the supersmart and bright students do them is because they enjoy the sense of insight and conquest of a new idea. Doing them isnt work. And the smarter you are, the more fun you get from them. Life isnt the least bit fair. I hope that the intersection of the set of students doing this unit and the set of incurably dumb students is .
7
4.3. MANIFOLDS
109
Exercise 4.3.20. Show that a cone is homeomorphic to a disc, and that a hemisphere is homeomorphic to a disc. Exercise 4.3.21. Show that two cones glued together along their boundary are homeomorphic to S 2 . Some Denitions I begin by introducing some graphical shorthand. I want to describe a glueing of opposite sides of the unit square. The equivalence relation is simple to state: on I 2 I put 0 1 t [0, 1], t t This is not of itself an equivalence because it is not reexive, so I also stipulate t [0, 1], and t [0, 1], 1 t 1 t 0 t 0 t
This is an equivalence relation only on the vertical edges. I can either dene a glueing on a subset or, more simply, ensure that every other point is equivalent only to itself: s, t [0, 1], s t s t
Exercise 4.3.22. Conrm that this denes an equivalence relation on I 2 . I shall represent this equivalence graphically by the picture of gure 4.2. It should be obvious from the diagram how to use the arrows to recover the formal denition of the equivalence. The picture of gure 4.3 shows that we have a similar equivalence, but that we twist the square before doing the glueing. Exercise 4.3.23. Dene fully the equivalence relation of gure 4.3. The resulting surface with boundary is now fully dened as a quotient space of the square. I now dene the following six surfaces (with and without boundary). M stands for mbius strip, C for cylinder, D for disc, K for Klein bottle, T o for torus and RP for real projective space. The superscripts specify the dimension. They are shown in gure 4.4. Matching styles of arrows are to be glued together.
110
Figure 4.2: A cylinder obtained by glueing opposite sides of a square.
> >
Figure 4.3: A Mbius strip obtained by glueing opposite sides of a square o with a twist.
>
>
4.3. MANIFOLDS
111
C = D2=
>
>
>
M = K2 =
> >
> > >
> >
>
>
Figure 4.4: Some denitions. Exercise 4.3.24. Dene each of the glueings in gure 4.4 algebraically. Exercise 4.3.25. When you have two dierent styles of arrows, you may either have a quotient space of a quotient space with two quotient operations, or a more complicated equivalence relation including both. Conrm that the two constructions give homeomorphic spaces. Exercise 4.3.26. Prove that T 2 S 1 S 1 , where means is homeomorphic = = to. The objects in gure 4.4 mostly should not need much explanation. The cylinder is precisely what you get if you take a sheet of paper and roll it around and glue two opposite edges together. Likewise a mbius strip. I o hope you made one of these as a child and tried cutting it down the middle to see what you got9 . The disc can be constructed out of paper but comes out looking like a cone. Well, one of the earlier exercises should tell you that a cone is a disc up to homeomorphism. The torus can be made by taking a cylinder and then glueing the circular ends together; it make a bit of a mess of the paper unless the circles have a radius small compared with the distance between them, but you should be able to see the correctness of the denition.
If you had a deprived childhood and didnt get to do these things, go home and do them as soon as possible. This is not so silly as it sounds; it is said that most girls played with dolls and may have developed some primitive maternal instincts, whereas boys played with things and developed spatial intuitions. Ladies, if there is any truth in this assertion in your own case, make up for lost time and develop a spatial sense now! Blokes who want to play with dolls and develop maternal instincts may do so if they choose.
9
> >
> >
IRP2 =
> > >
> >
>
>
T =
>
112
The other two spaces are not met with in nature and for an interesting reason. The others can be embedded in R3 , that is to say, there is a map from T 2 into R3 which is a homeomorphism of T 2 onto its image. Likewise for C 2 , D2 M 2 and S 2 . But there is no embedding of the klein bottle in R3 , nor of the real projective space RP2 . Consequently you never got to play with them in the bath when you were littlies. But the fact that we live in a three dimensional space is, seen from the larger perspective, merely a handicap. We should rise above these things. The spaces exist whether we are familiar with them or not; we just have to enlarge our world view, which is good for us and stops us getting in a rut. If you google klein bottle you will get a nice picture of one: this is actually slightly wrong because it intersects itself in the picture but really shouldnt: what this means is that it is nearly an embedding in the three dimensional space we live in, but not quite. I dont know if there are any pictures of RP2 on the net. If you nd one, tell me about it. I shall now give a pictorial proof of a useful result. It is shown in gure 4.5. The reason it is a proof is that each picture stage can be written out algebraically in terms of quotient operations if desired10 . I have earlier stated that proofs by picture are hopelessly unsafe, and as a general matter they are, but in this case, each picture is merely shorthand for something which is easily described algebraically. And it really is an awful lot shorter. The compression is extremely useful because it allows us to see exactly what is going on more easily than if we wrote it out fully in algebra. The symbol denotes being homeomorphic in the proof. = Exercise 4.3.27. Step through the argument carefully and conrm that each line is correct. Exercise 4.3.28. Prove using the above result, that if you glue two mbius o 2 strips together along the boundary, you get K . Exercise 4.3.29. Prove that if you glue two discs together along their boundaries you get S 2 . Exercise 4.3.30. Prove that if you glue a mobius strip to a disc along their boundaries you get RP2 . I strongly recommend graphical proofs like gure 4.5 unless you want to take an awfully long time.
10
Although youd have to be barking mad to desire it.
4.3. MANIFOLDS
113
>>
> >
>>
Figure 4.5: A Proposition and Proof: Geometric Style!
4.3.2
Conclusions
With the kindly intention of saving your poor little brains from overheating I shall stop at this point, although it would be tempting to say that we are only just starting on a whole new world. The open door through which you have walked such a small distance is a door into a strange and wonderful universe. Maybe its better to leave your curiosity less than satised. If this sort of thing looks fun you can get more of it in Geometric Topology in third year. If it looks absolutely horrible, you can easily avoid it.
> >
> >
> > >>
> > > >
> > > >

> >
>
>
> >
Proof:
> >
Proposition 4.3.1
> >
>
>
114
Appendix A Algebra and Arithmetic

A.1 Introduction
In the rst section, I am going to dene a whole lot of new terms to describe things that are covered in what is called abstract algebra. This is rather a matter of going through the zoo and pointing at the weird beasts; the last beasts we come to are the rings and elds, and I shall merely give their denitions and a few examples. The second section, Arithmetic, is about the properties of a rather well known ring, Z, the integers. I have lifted it from Alice Niemeyers lectures of some years ago and cut it to the minimum. This is not my part of the course, and I am including this material in the hope of being helpful. Dont blame John Bamberg if he shudders when he sees it.
A.2
Unary Operations, Operators
Denition A.2.1. A unary operation or operator on a set X is a map T : X X. Example A.2.1. An n n matrix is an operator on Rn . Example A.2.2. Transposition is a unary operation on n n matrices. Example A.2.3. On the space C (R, R) of innitely dierentiable functions from R to R, the identity map I is an operator, as is aI for any a R. So is the operation of dierentiation, usually written D. So is D + aI, and since 115
116
APPENDIX A. ALGEBRA AND ARITHMETIC
we can compose operators, so is (D + aI)(D + bI): this takes the function f C (R, R) to d2 f df + (a + b) + ab f 2 dx dx Solving the second order linear dierential equation d2 f df + 4 + 2f = ex sin(x) 2 dx dx is a matter of nding the preimage under the operator of the function ex sin(x). You solved such equations last year. There are obviously lots more. Note that a map such as the determinant from n n matrices to R is not an operator. These suggest a way of looking at an operator as a procedure which does something. If there is an inverse map then it can be regarded as undoing it! The more ways you have of thinking about mathematical objects the better.
A.3
Binary Operations
Denition A.3.1 (Binary Operation). Let G be a set. A binary operation on G is a function that maps an ordered pair of elements of G to an element of G. Formally, a binary operation on a set G is a map :GGG Note that a binary operation is closed in the sense that it combines two elements of a set to yield a third element that again lies in the set. This means that it never goes outside the set. Example A.3.1. 1. Addition on Z is a binary operation: any ordered pairs of elements of Z is mapped to another element of Z. 2. Addition is also a binary operation on N, R, C. 3. is a binary operation on R. 4. is not a binary operation on N. 5. Multiplication is also a binary operation on Z, N, R and C.
A.3. BINARY OPERATIONS
117
6. Let G = Mn,n (R) be the set of all n n matrices with entries in R. Then matrix multiplication is a binary operation on G. Exercise A.3.1. Which of the following operations are binary operations? The addition + on the vector space Rn . The dot product on the vector space Rn for n > 1. The cross product on the vector space R3 . Now we can look at some nice properties that binary operations sometimes have. Denition A.3.2. Let be a binary operation on a set G. Then we say that is commutative if g h = h g for all g, h G. We are very used to commutative binary operations, since addition and multiplication on N, Z, R and C are all commutative: it does not matter in which order we perform the binary operation. Do we know any non-commutative binary operations? Yes we do! Example A.3.2. Matrix multiplication is not commutative, e.g. 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 = 1 0 1 . 1 0 0 2 0 1 1 0 2 However 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 2 1 0 1 0 1 0 = 1 0 1 . 1 0 2 1 0 0 0 1 0
Another interesting property binary operations can have is the following: Denition A.3.3. Let be a binary operation on a set G. Then we say that is associative if (a b) c = a (b c) for all a, b, c G. Most of the examples of binary operations we have seen are associative. 1. Matrix multiplication is associative but not commutative, 2. Function composition is associative but not commutative. 3. The cross product is not commutative, nor associative, on R3 ,
118
Exercise A.3.2. Let A be a nite set and write Bij(A) for the set of all bijections between A and itself. As remarked earlier, we can call these permutations in the case where A is nite. Let : Bij(A) Bij(A) Bij(A) denote the operation of composing the bijections. It is easy to see that the composition of two bijections is a bijection (Check this!) so we have a well dened binary operator on Bij(A). Is it associative? Commutative? It may have crossed your mind that quite a lot of common structure is noticeable in the various bits of mathematics we have done. For example, we can add and subtract and multiply integers and also real numbers and also 2 2 matrices. This is only the tip of a humungous iceberg.
A.4
Groups
Denition A.4.1. Suppose : G G G is a binary operation. We shall say that (G, ) has an identity if there is some element e G such that g G, e g=g e=g
Exercise A.4.1. How many of the sets and binary operations discussed so far have an identity? Denition A.4.2. Suppose (G, ) has an identity e. We say that it has inverses i g G, h G : g h = h g = e We usually write the inverse of g as g 1 which we read as g inverse. Exercise A.4.2. How many of the sets and binary operations discussed so far have inverses? Denition A.4.3. A group is a pair (G, ) where G is a non-empty set, : G G G is a binary operation on G such that 1. is associative
2. (G, ) has an identity, e 3. Every g G has an inverse, g 1 , such that g g 1 = g 1 g = e
A.4. GROUPS
119
We care about groups because there are so many of them. The little dears turn up all over the place and you cant do much serious science or mathematics without nding one. The symmetries of a crystal are specied by a group; the symmetries of quantum mechanics involving things like SU(2) are groups (Lie groups actually) and we shall meet some of them later. Exercise A.4.3. Make a list of all the groups you can think of. Conrm that they are groups. Exercise A.4.4. Let Z12 denote the integers as seen on a clock. Then we can add numbers as the clock does so that 11+2 = 1. I shall imagine a clock which has a zero where most ordinary clocks have a twelve. Then I could write out an addition table for what is called arithmetic modulo twelve. I could also do multiplication in this system. Is the set of twelve integers with clock addition a group? Check carefully. Exercise A.4.5. Suppose I had a crazy clock with only 11 hours on it, so that it produced the time every hour as a number between 0 and 10. Three hours after nine oclock would be one oclock and so on. Show that these numbers (known as the integers mod eleven) also form a group under the addition mod 11. Exercise A.4.6. Dene, for each positive integer n, n on Z by a, b Z, a b m Z nm = (b a)
Show that n is an equivalence on Z. What are the equivalence classes for n = 2, 3, 12? Show how we can turn the equivalence classes into a group by adding a sample element from each class and nding the resulting class. Show the sum class does not depend on the samples you chose. The groups are called Zn , the cyclic groups. Exercise A.4.7. I decide to dene a binary operation on the students in this class. Given students A and B, my operation simply chooses the taller. I suppose no two people are exactly the same height. Does this operation make the class into a group? If not, why not? Is there an identity and if so who? Exercise A.4.8. For a nite group (G, ), you could write out the multiplication table for , all of it. Unlike the multiplication tables for integers you wouldnt have to stop after they got a bit big. Here is a set of four elements and a multiplication table. Conrm that it denes a group.
120
APPENDIX A. ALGEBRA AND ARITHMETIC e e a b c a b a b b c c e e a c c e a b
e a b c
Exercise A.4.9. How many other groups are there with four elements? Exercise A.4.10. n {j Z : 1 j n}. A permutation of n is a bijection from n to itself. Verify that the permutations of n form a group under the operation of composition. How many elements are there in the group? Is the group always abelian? Denition A.4.4. The permutation group on n is called Sn . Exercise A.4.11. Many of the groups which you have met are abelian, meaning that the binary operation is commutative. Can you nd a nonabelian nite group? This is rather a lot of work if you do it the stupid way and very easy if you are smart. Exercise A.4.12. What is the smallest possible group? Write out its operation table. Exercise A.4.13. What is the next smallest group? Write out its operation table. Exercise A.4.14. What is the smallest non-abelian group? Write out its operation table. Exercise A.4.15. Keep going until you run out of patience or reach groups of order 8. Two results which may make lling in multiplication a whole lot easier: Theorem A.4.1. In any group (G, ) the right cancellation law holds: a, b, c G, Proof: a, b, c G, a b (a b) b1 a (b b1 ) a e a = = = = = c (c c c c b b) b1 (b b1 ) e a b=c ba=c
A.4. GROUPS Theorem A.4.2. In any group (G, ) the left cancellation law holds: a, b, c G, a b=a cb=c
121
Proof: This is an easy exercise. Note that a kindlier person might have explained after each deduction just what axiom or property is being used to get from one line to the next. See if you can go through the above proof conrming that every line does indeed follow from the line above by some rule you can cite. It should be possible to pretend you are a little robot and can only do things by following exact rules which are named, and then see if you can get through the argument. If not, it does not stand up and you should complain. Maybe shouting Exterminate! while you do so.
A.4.1
Subgroups
Denition A.4.5. The order of a group is the number of elements in it. We write |H| for the order of H. If you look hard at the above operation table for a group of order 4, and compare it with the smallest possible group with one element e and table e e = e, you will notice that every group has a subgroup consisting of just this element. It is a group in its own right and also a subset of a group, so it is called a subgroup: Denition A.4.6. If (G, ) is a group and H G is a subset so that (H, ) is also a group then H is said to be a subgroup of G and we write H < G. It follows that every group has at least two subgroups, e and the group itself. These are called improper subgroups, all the others (if any) are called proper subgroups. If you look at the table for the 4-group again you will see another subgroup, H = {e, b} gives a subgroup of order two. Exercise A.4.16. Draw an equilateral triangle and label the vertices A, B, C. We can rotate the triangle into itself and specify them by permutations. Note that every permutation is either a rotation or a reection of the triangle. In fact the group is the same as S3 . Write out its operation table, and nd all the subgroups. Exercise A.4.17. The above group is also called the Dihedral group D3 because it is related to the symmetries of a planar gure. There is also a group D4 which is the set of symmetries of a square. How many elements are there in D4 ? Write out its operation table and list all the subgroups.
122
Exercise A.4.18. We can regard D4 as a subgroup of S4 . Show it is a proper subgroup by giving a permutation of the letters {A, B, C, D} which is not a symmetry of the square. Exercise A.4.19. You can get subgroups from a group by taking an element g G and calculating g, g 2 = g g, g 3 , g n . Do this for the nite groups you have looked at so far. Since the group is nite you must repeat after some point. Show that the powers of any element of a group G must form a subgroup of G. Exercise A.4.20. Find a subgroup of R2 , +. Find all subgroups! Exercise A.4.21. Dene a relation H on a nite group G having subgroup H < G by x, y G, x H y h H x = y h 1. Show H is an equivalence relation on G. 2. Show that H itself is one equivalence class. 3. Show that any two equivalence classes have the same number of elements. 4. Deduce that H < G |H| divides |G|
A.4.2
Group Actions
You will have noticed that many groups are groups of bijections (in a sense all are, up to change of name). This suggests an intimate relation between a group and the things the group elements act on to change them into other things. For example, The dihedral group D3 acts on an equilateral triangle to move it into itself. Generally we say that a group G acts on a set X when this sort of thing happens. Formally: Denition A.4.7. A group G is said to have an action on a set X when :GX X is a map with the properties 1. x X, (e, x) = x, where e G is the group identity
A.5. RINGS AND FIELDS 2. g, h G, x X, (gh, x) = (g, (h, x)) We often write (g, x) as g(x) treating g as a map from X to X. Exercise A.4.22. Make a list of all the group actions you can think of. Remark A.4.1. Observe that every group acts naturally on itself. Exercise A.4.23. Explain!
123
Remark A.4.2. Observe that a general solution to a vector eld on Rn denes an action of R on Rn . Exercise A.4.24. Explain!
A.5
Rings and Fields
This section is mostly about jargon. It is pretty much a sequence of denitions, and the only reason for doing them is that they are standard and get used a lot. If you read a book or paper which mentions non-commutative rings, at least you wont be intimidated because youll know what they are.
A.5.1
Rings
Most of the algebraic systems you have met at school have not just one binary operation but two or even more. One of the things we are doing is gradually building up to recover more complicated structures such as the real numbers or vector spaces. So now we introduce a set which is a group and which also has a second operation. I shall call the group operation addition and the second operation multiplication, but this does not mean that they are exactly what you mean by them in the case of numbers. They are just convenient names. Similarly I shall use 1 to denote a multiplicative identity without meaning that it has to be the number 1. Denition A.5.1. A ring is a set X and a binary operation called addition and a second binary operation called multiplication such that the following properties hold: 1. (X, ) is an abelian group with 0 as identity and the inverse of x X is written as x.
124 2.
APPENDIX A. ALGEBRA AND ARITHMETIC is associative, that is x, y, z X, (x y) z=x (y z)
3.
is left distributive over , that is x, y, z X, x (y z) = (x y) (x z)
4.
is right distributive over , that is x, y, z X, (y z) x = (y x) (z x)
Remark A.5.1. There are various denitions of a ring:some insist on a multiplcative identity. I follow the better authors here. Example A.5.1. The integers Z form the best known ring. Exercise A.5.1. Verify the claim that Z is a ring. Example A.5.2. A r eal polynomial of one variable is a nite string of nonzero numbers together with an indeterminate symbol (usually x) which occurs, with a positive integer as index, next to each of the numbers in the string. For example, 3 2x + 4x2 . The set of real polynomials {p(x) = a0 + a1 x + a2 x2 + + an xn } forms a ring. Adding them is done by adding the coecients, and multiplying them is done in the usual way by using the sum law for indices. Exercise A.5.2. Verify the above claim. Remark A.5.2. Alternatively we could dene a real polynomial in one indeterminate as a nite string of the form a0 + a1 x + a2 x2 + + an xn where the aj R and an = 0. This has the advantage that we can make a nice easy denition of the degree: Denition A.5.2. The above polynomial with highest power an xn , an = 0, is said to be a polynomial of degree n. Note that if you add two polynomials the degree of the sum is the higher of the degrees of the components, and if you multiply two polynomials of degrees n, m the degree of the product is n + m. Exercise A.5.3. Dene a polynomial in two indeterminates. Is the set of such things a ring? Much of what can be done with integers can also be done with any ring including the polynomials. For example we can look for factors, we can dene primes or something like them.
A.5. RINGS AND FIELDS Example A.5.3. The set Mn,n of square matrices is a ring. Exercise A.5.4. Verify the above claim.
125
Denition A.5.3. A subring of a ring (X, , ) is a subset U X which is a ring under the same operations , . Example A.5.4. The set of functions F ([a, b]) is a ring. The set C 0 ([a, b]) of continuous functions from [a, b] to R is a subring. The addition of functions is asa usual, and the multiplication of functions also as usual. Exercise A.5.5. Verify the above claims. Example A.5.5. The clock integers, the integers mod 12, form a ring. We can write down both a nite binary operation table for addition and for multiplication mod 12. There is nothing special about the number twelve, we could choose any positive integer n and take the integers with addition mod n, that is, n 0 and = when m = an + r, for 0 r < n m r . The resulting ring is commonly = called Zn . The symbol is caled congruence and an exercise will ask you to = show that is in fact an equivalence relation on Z. = Exercise A.5.6. Verify the above claims. If we look at the addition table for Z4 we get + 0 1 2 3 The multiplication table is 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 3 2 0 2 0 2 3 0 3 2 1 0 0 1 2 3 1 1 2 3 0 2 2 3 0 1 3 3 0 1 2
0 1 2 3
The non-zero elements certainly do not form a group since 2 2 = 0. For a ring they dont have to, but as we shall see later, for a eld they do. Also
126
we have 2 1 = 2 3 = 1 which means we do not have cancellation, which we must have in a group. So Z4 is not a eld. In order for it to be a ring we need to believe that is associative and also left and right distributive. Since it is commutative, if it is left distributive it is also right distributive, so we only have to look at two issues. Now associativity, we believe, holds in Z, we have been using it for years, so a, b, c Z, a (b c) = (a b) c
where denotes multiplication of integers. And if the two numbers are the same, reducing them mod four, that is getting the remainders when we divide by four, will leave them the same. So if you give me three elements of Z4 I just do multiplication on them the two ways as if they are in Z and get the same answer then knock o fours and also get the same answer. So I have that is associative in Z4 and indeed in Zn for any n Z+ . And exactly the same argument works for distributivity: it works in Z, has done for years, and if two numbers in Z are equal they stay equal when I do the reduction mod four. So Z4 is a ring. Doing this for Z5 there is a dierence. The + is still a commutative binary operation as before. The multiplication table for the non-zero elements is: 1 1 2 3 4 2 2 4 1 3 3 3 1 4 2 4 4 3 2 1
1 2 3 4
A look at the symmetry of the table tells us it is commutative and has an identity, 1, and checking the number 1 occurs in every row precisely once so we have inverses and the table must be an abelian group. Hence Z5 is a eld. It is worth noticing that a table like the above could have the columns permuted without changing the information in any way. Likewise it could have the rows permuted. We can still read o a b from such a modied table. Ordering them by increasing digits is convenient but inessential. Another point worth making is that the use of numbers hasnt really got a lot to do with it, changing the names to anything whatever, as long as we had distinct symbols and did the replacement consistently, would not change anything very important, the underlying structure would be the same.
A.5. RINGS AND FIELDS
127
So I shall set up a translation system: I shall rewrite 1 to 0 in the above table, I shall rewrite 4 to 2, I shall rewrite 2 to 1 and I shall leave 3 unchanged. I shall also rewrite to just for the hell of it. If I do this I get the table 0 1 3 2 0 0 1 3 2 1 1 2 0 3 3 3 0 2 1 2 2 3 1 0
Now I swap the last two columns and then the last two rows and I get 0 1 2 3 0 0 1 2 3 1 1 2 3 0 2 2 3 0 1 3 3 0 1 2
This is just old Z4 , so we have not only discovered that the non-zero elements of Z5 are a group, we know that, up to a change of name, it is in fact Z4 . The business of changing names to protect the guilty is very common and we shall see a lot of it in future. Objects that have the same structure but with the names changed are said to be isomorphic which is Greek for having the same shape. This is a matter of much practical importance and I shall return to it later. Polynomial Rings We regard polynomials as simply formal expressions with an indeterminate x, but of course each polynomial determines a function p : R R, x a0 + a1 x + + an x n
We may dene higher order polynomials with more than one indeterminate, for example, p(x, y) = a0 +a1 x+b1 y +a2 x2 +b2 y 2 +c2 xy + +an xn and these dene functions p : Rk R for k > 1 being the number of indeterminates. Any set of polynomials with some xed set of indeterminates give a ring.
128
Exercise A.5.7. Verify the above claims. I said we could do some of the same sort of thing for rings as we can for the integers. We can try dividing one polynomial into another to see if we get a polynomial out or if there is a remainder: (x 2) )x2 + 2x + 3( x2 2x
x 4x + 3( +4 4x 8 11 (x 2)(x + 4) + 11
x2 + 2x + 3
If there is a remainder it must be a polynomial having degree less than that of the poynomial we are dividing by. If the remainder is zero, we say the rst polynomial divides the second. Theorem A.5.1. If the real polynomial function p(x) has a zero at a R, that is, if p(a) = 0, then (x a) divides the polynomial p, and if (x a) divides p then p(a) = 0 Proof: Proving the rst half rst, we can divide (x a) into p to get a polynomial q plus a remainder which must be a real number. In other words p(x) = (x a)q(x) + r If we evaluate both at a then the result is 0 = 0 + r so the remainder r must be zero. Conversely, if p = (x a)q then since the right hand side is zero when x = a so is the left hand side. Later we shall make use of this result in showing that the composite of rotations in R3 is a rotation. Exercise A.5.8. Would it make sense to divide one matrix into another and have a remainder? If so give an example if not, why not?
A.5.2
Fields
A eld is a special sort of ring, one where the non-zero elements of the ring form an abelian group under the multiplication. If they form a non-abelian group, the object is called a skew-eld. The only elds you know so far are Q and R.
A.6. ARITHMETIC
129
Exercise A.5.9. Write down the addition and multiplication table for Z2 (which has only the numbers 0, 1 in it) and verify it is a eld. Now repeat for Z3 , Z5 and Z7 . Is Z4 a eld? Verify it is a ring. This concludes the survey of the algebra zoo. There are more exotic things in it, but this has introduced you to the more important of the beasts. In order to remember the names and what they mean, it is easiest to remember the more common concrete examples, so if you read about rings, think integers and if you read about elds think R. A few more examples would be even better, because then there is a good chance you will be able to remember the rules which dene them. All of these beasts are important in applications (some in such areas as coding theory) or we wouldnt trouble to tell you about them. Fields and nite groups are used in such things as proving the insolubility of the quintic by extracting roots. (You know the formula for solving the quadratic equation. There is a similar formula for solving cubics and quartics, but there isnt a similar formula for higher degree polynomials. Knowing this saves a lot of time that might be spent looking for one.)
A.6
Arithmetic
This section has been lifted wholesale from Alice Niemeyers notes from last year and deals with the properties of a rather well known Ring, the integers, Z. We begin by dening a natural relation on the integers. Denition A.6.1 (The Divides Relation). An integer x is said to divide another integer y if there exists an integer n such that y = nx. We write x|y to mean x divides y. Lemma A.6.1 (Division Algorithm). If m is a positive integer and n is an integer, then there exist unique integers q and r such that n = mq + r and 0 r < m.
The integer r is called the remainder. Example A.6.1. If we take m = 4 and n = 23, then q = 5 and r = 3 are the only integers which satisfy the Division Algorithm.
130
Warning: r must be between 0 and m. Denition A.6.2 (Greatest Common Divisor). The greatest common divisor of two positive integers x and y is dened by gcd(x, y) = max{i N : i|x and i|y}. Example A.6.2. The divisors of 8 are 1, 2, 4, 8 and the divisors of 20 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20. So gcd(8, 20) = 4. The gcd of two distinct primes is always 1. Theorem A.6.2. The greatest common divisor of two non-zero integers a and b, can be expressed as a linear combination of a and b: gcd(a, b) = am + bn for some integers m and n. Denition A.6.3. The least common multiple of two positive integers x and y is dened by lcm(x, y) = min{i N : x|i and y|i}. Lemma A.6.3. For all non-zero integers x and y, lcm(x, y) = xy . gcd(x, y)
Denition A.6.4. Two positive integers are relatively prime if their gcd is equal to 1. Example A.6.3. Any two distinct primes are relatively prime. 15 and 8 are relatively prime.
A.6.1
The Euclidean Algorithm in Z
Let a1 , a2 Z with 0 a2 a1 . Then we can compute the greatest common divisor d = gcd(a1 , a2 ) of a1 and a2 by the following algorithm and nd integers x, y Z such that d = xa1 + ya2 .
A.6. ARITHMETIC Repeatedly employ the Division Algorithm in Z to obtain: a1 a2 ai = q1 a2 + a3 with 0 a3 < a2 = q2 a3 + a4 with 0 a4 < a3 ... = qi ai+1 + ai+2 with 0 ai+2 < ai+1 ...
131
As ai < ai1 < < a2 a1 there has to be an n Z+ such that an+2 = 0. In this case we say the algorithm has stopped. Then the last equation with a non-zero remainder is: an1 = qn1 an + an+1 with 0 < an+1 < an . Now we rewrite all these equation to solve them for their remainder and we get a1 q 1 a2 a2 q 2 a3 an2 qn2 an1 an1 qn1 an Starting with the last equation an1 qn1 an = an+1 replace the occurrence of ai for the largest i on the left hand side by the equation solving for ai . That is we begin by inserting the second last equation: an1 qn1 (an2 qn2 an1 ) = an+1 , that gives (1 + qn1 qn2 )an1 qn1 an2 = an+1 . Now the third last equation solves for an1 and we can insert this. If we repeatedly do this we nd integers x, y Z such that xa1 + ya2 = an+1 . We will see later that an+1 = gcd(a1 , a2 ). Let us rst look at an example though. = = ... = = a3 a4 an an+1
132
Example A.6.4. Let a1 = 558 and a2 = 423 558 423 135 18 = = = = 1 423 + 135 3 135 + 18 7 18 + 9 29+0
Then the last non-zero remainder is 9 so it will turn out that 9 = gcd(a1 , a2 ). Now we do the reverse substitution and get 9 = = = = = 135 7 18 135 7(423 3 135) 22 135 7 423 22 (558 423) 7 423 22 558 29 423
Example A.6.5. We use the Euclidean Algorithm to nd the gcd of 56 and 1450. 1450 = (25)56 + 50 56 = (50)1 + 6 50 = (6)8 + 2 6 = (2)3 + 0 Therefore gcd(56, 1450) = 2. Theorem A.6.4. Let 0 = an+2 < an+1 < an < < a2 a1 be the integers computed by the Euclidean Algorithm for a1 , a2 . Then an+1 = gcd(a1 , a2 ). Proof: Let d = gcd(a1 , a2 ). Then d divides a1 and a2 . As a3 = a1 q1 a2 it follows that d divides a3 . So d divides a2 and a3 and therefore by the next equation, d divides a4 . Repeatedly applying this argument we see that d divides an+1 . On the other hand the Euclidean Algorithm stopped when an+2 = 0 which means that an = qn an+1 and thus an+1 divides an . As an1 = qn1 an + an+1 it follows that an+1 divides an1 . Repeatedly applying this argument we see that an+1 divides a1 and a2 . Thus an+1 is a common divisor of a1 and a2 . As d is the greatest common divisor it follows that an+1 divides d Hence d = an+1 .
A.6. ARITHMETIC
133
A.6.2
Properties of the gcd
1. a, b Z and gcd(a, b) = 1 and a divides bc then a divides c. Proof: Let x, y Z such that xa + yb = 1 then xac + ybc = c. Suppose that bc = az. Then xac + yaz = c and hence a(xc + yz) = c and therefore a divides c. 2. For a, b Z and m Z\{0} holds m gcd(a, b) = gcd(am, bm).
Proof: Let d = gcd(a, b) then d | a and d | b and hence md | ma and md | mb showing that md is a common divisor. Now there are , Z such that d = a + b. Let c be a common divisor of am, bm, that is c | am and c | bm then c | am and c | bm and hence c | m(a + b) = md and therefore md is the greatest common divisor. Denition A.6.5. Let a, b Z. Then c is called a common multiple of a and b if a and b both divide c. Further Z is called the least common multiple of a and b, denoted lcm(a, b) if is a common multiple and divides every other common multiple. Theorem A.6.5. For a, b Z holds gcd(a, b)lcm(a, b) = ab. Proof: We prove this result by distinguishing whether gcd(a, b) is 1 or not. Case 1: gcd(a, b) = 1. Then there is a x Z such that lcm(a, b) = ax. Since b divides lcm(a, b) it follows by that ab divides ax = lcm(a, b). But gcd(a, b) = 1 and so b divides x by 1. Thus lcm(a, b) = abx and therefore ab | lcm(a, b). On the other hand lcm(a, b) | ab and thus ab is the lcm(a, b). Case 2: If d = gcd(a, b) then there are x, y Z such that a = xd and b = yd. Then gcd(x, y) = 1 (because by Property 2 it follows that d gcd(x, y) = gcd(dx, dy) = gcd(a, b) = d and so gcd(x, y) = 1.) Now by Case 1 gcd(x, y)lcm(x, y) = xy.
134
Multiplying this equation by d2 we get d gcd(x, y)dlcm(x, y) = dxdy which means gcd(a, b)lcm(a, b) = ab. Note that this gives us a way to compute least common multiples in Euclidean Domains as we already know how to compute greatest common divisors.
A.6.3
Primes
A positive integer p is called a prime if whenever p divides ab for a, b Z then p divides a or p divides b. Lemma Let p be a prime. Then the only divisors of p are 1, p. Suppose a is a divisor of p. Then there is an integer b such that p = ab. Hence p divides ab (as p 1 = ab) and by the denition of prime, either p divides a or p divides b. Hence ab divides a or ab divides b. But then there is an integer c such that abc = a and so bc = 1 and so b = 1 or an integer d such that abd = b and so ad = 1 and so ad = 1. Theorem [Unique Factorisation Theorem] Every positive integer n is either 1 or can be expressed as a product of prime integers, and this factorisation is unique except for the order of the factors. Proof: We rst show that the following holds: Every positive integer n is either 1 or can be expressed as a product of prime integers. We prove this result by induction on n. Note rst that if n = 1 then the statement holds. Now suppose that the statement has been proved for all integers n with n < k for some positive integer k. Then we can show that it also holds for k. If k is a prime, then the statement holds. If k is not a prime, then k = ab and 1 < a, b < k. Hence the theorem holds for a and for b. Thus there are primes p1 , . . . , pr and q1 , . . . , qs such that a = p1 pr and b = q1 qs . Then k = ab = p1 pr q1 qs and so k can be written as a product of primes. Now we show that the expression is unique. Suppose n > 1 and suppose that n = p1 pr = q1 qs . Then p1 divides q1 qs and so p1 divides qj for some j. As qj is also prime, it follows that p1 = qj and we may assume without
A.6. ARITHMETIC
135
loss of generality that p1 = q1 . Thus cancellation gives p2 pr = q2 qs . We can repeat this argument until on one side there are no primes left. Then we have to end up with 1 = 1 since 1 = qt q is not possible. Thus we have found that the p1 = q1 and p2 = q2 etc If we write a positive integer as a product of primes in increasing order we get n = pm1 pmr 1 r with p 1 < p 2 < . . . < pr and we call this the standard form for n.
A.6.4
Examples
a = 31752 = 23 34 72 . b = 126000 = 24 32 53 7.
Note that the standard forms of integers can be used to nd their GCDs. gcd(a, b) = 23 32 7 = 504.
A.6.5
Linear Congruences
Let n Z+ and a, b Z then we write ab (mod n) if n | (a b).
Now n | (a b) if and only if a b nZ. nZ is the set {nz : z Z}.
A.6.6
1.
Properties of Congruences
a b (mod n) a b (mod n) a + a b + b (mod n) aa bb (mod n)
2. If d > 0 and d | n then ab (mod n) a b (mod d).
If n divides a b and d divides n then d divides a b.
136 3. ab ab ab
(mod n1 ) (mod n2 ) ab . . . (mod nk )
(mod lcm(n1 , . . . , nk ))
This is easy to see as the lcm(n1 , . . . , nk ) divides a b since a b is a common multiple of n1 , . . . , nk .
A.6.7
Examples
1. Find the last decimal digit of 719 . Solution: 719 (49)9 7 (mod 10) (1)9 7 (mod 10) 7 (mod 10) 3 (mod 10)
So the last digit is 3. 2. Fermat thought that F5 = 22 + 1 was prime but Euler showed that 641 divides F5 : proof: We must show that 232 1 (mod 641). Now 26 10 26 5 27 54 228 625 228 (16) 228 232 64 640 1 (1)4 1 1 1 (mod (mod (mod (mod (mod (mod (mod 641) 641) 641) 641) 641) 641) 641)
5
3. Let n = p1 pk be the decomposition of n into primes. Then 1 k ab (mod n) a b (mod pi ) i
for each i = 1, . . . , k. This is clear because n is the lcm of the moduli. This is often easier than working modulo n.
A.6. ARITHMETIC
137
A.6.8
Division in Congruences
In general ax ay (mod n) with a 0 (mod n) does not imply x y (mod n). As Zn is not always an integral domain the cancellation law ax = ay with a = 0 implies x = y might not hold. For example, 2 8 2 2 (mod 12) but 8 2 (mod 12). We would like to work out when we can divide with congruences. Theorem A.6.6. 1. ax ay (mod n) x y (mod 2. Proof: 1. ax ay (mod n) n|a(x y) a n | (x y) gcd(n, a) gcd(n, a) n | (x y) gcd(n, a) n x y (mod ) gcd(n, a)
n a Note that we use gcd( gcd(n,a) , gcd(n,a) ) = 1. n ) gcd(a,n)
ax ay (mod n), gcd(a, n) = 1
x y (mod n)
2. This is just a special case of (1).
A.6.9
Examples:
12 ) gcd(2,12)
2 8 2 2 (mod 12) and hence 8 2 (mod 8 2 (mod 6).
which shows that
3x 12y (mod 49) implies x 4y (mod 49). If p is a prime and a 0 (mod p) then gcd(a, p) = 1 and so ax ay (mod p) implies x y (mod p).
Index
+, 17 0 = 1, frightful consequences of, 24 2, denition of, 13 =, 8, 9 C 2 , 109 D2 , 109 K 2 , 109 L1 metric, 59 L2 metric, 85 L metric , 59, 75 M 2 , 109 S 2 , 104 T 2 , 104, 109 N, 12 R, denition of, 89 RP2 , 109 , 19 \, 34 , 10 111 =, , 9 , 8 , 8 , denition of, 16 , 39 , 9 ,9 vis viva, 5 1-1, 44 Abraham Lincoln, dogs tails and, 78 abstraction merits of, 73 138 perils of, 73 Algebraic Topology, 105 Algebraic Topology, attraction of, 74 an operating system not, 78 Archimedes, 52 Argumentam ad Hominem, 21 Argumentam de Auctoritas, 20 Aristotle, 27 atlas, 105 base for a topology, 102 Bayesianity, 28 Beautiful Girls, space of, 2 bijection, 44 binary relation, 37 codomain of, 41 domain of, 41 image of, 41 inverse of, 42 blague, 4 Bolt, Andrew, 22 boundary of a manifold, 106 Bourbaki, 103 Bullshit. See also, blague, 4 BummerBummer , 95 cardinality, 46 cartesian product, 35 cauchy sequence, 83 Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality, 54 chart, 105 chewing gum, 66 closed subsets, 103
INDEX closure, 81, 103 complement, 34 complete metric space, 85 composite, 45 contraction map, 85 convergence, 83 Conway, 108 cows equivalence of, 39 marrying, 36 cultural pride, 82 de Morgan Laws, 23 Denitions, and why we like them, 4 discontinuity and tearing, 69 discrete metric, 58 empty set, 8 equality for sets, 9 equivalence, 39 esoterrorism, 99 eunuchs, 78 fakers, 74 fakirs, 74 nite, 12, 46 xed points of maps, 85 function spaces, 62 Gdels Thorem, 32 o Fruitloops and, 32 Geometry, 18 God existence of, 17 LaPlace and, 88 Mike Alder and, 24 Gotlobb Frege, 32 grammatical inference, 18, 27 happiness, method of attaining, 90 Hell, burning in forever, 24 Hilbert, 47 Innite Hotel of, 47 identity map, 45 inductive denition, 11 innite, 12, 47 inherited metric, 56 interior, 81, 103 intersection of sets, 10 Isaac Newton, 82 Kelley, 103 Keynes, 28 Kings College Cambridge, 28 klein bottle, 103 limit, 83, 103 Litle Green Man, 36 Logic, 18 long line, 106
139
management theory, 78 manhattan metric, 59 manifold, 105 manifold with boundary, 106 maps, 41 picture of, 42 mathematicians godlike superiority of, 77 moral imbecility of, 77 Mathematics, denition of, 93 metric, 50 metrics, equivalence of, 75 milliHelen, 2 mind, boggling of, 85 Modus Morons, 20 Modus Ponens, 20 momentum, kinetic energy, distinguishing between, 5 motion, continuity of, 74 Multi-valued logics, 28 in Mathematica, 27
140 music, space of, 49 Natural numbers, 10 onto, 44 oomph, 5 ordered pairs, 34 owning, relation of, 38 partition, 40 pendulum, 16 permutations, 45 Picard-Lindelf theorem, 86 o placeholders, 25 Plato, 52 Pope, infallibility of, 20 positivity, 51 power set, 35 precision intuitions and, 68 merits of, 17 pain of, 55 predicates, 25 preimage, 44 proof, form of, 13 proposition, compound, 23 proposition, denition of, 14 purple camels, 30 quantiers, 26 quantiers, order of, 27 question begging, 34 raising, 34 quotient groups, 91 rings, 91 spaces, 91 Recommended books, 3 Russells Paradox, 31 Satan, 25
INDEX scepticism vs gullibility, 16 Seigneur, droit de, 6 set dierence, 34 set membership, 8 Set theory, Axioms of, 12 sets, 7 sex, 7 Simmons, GF, 3 smiley, to be inserted by reader, 76 Space, shape of, 3 stargate, 51, 74 state space, 107 stretching and tearing, dierence between, 72 subset, 9 subsets, 28 subspace metric, 56 syllogism, 17 symmetry, 51 tautology, 23 Terry Pratchett, 7 things, existence of, 7 topological space, 98 topology, 98 tori, 103 triangle inequality, 51 truth mathematical, 16 physical, 16 Truth Tables, 23 Truth, Justice, Mercy: existence of, 7 ugly girls, 57 ultracoolth, 60 union of sets, 9 valid, 18 von Neumann, J, 11 Weeks, Jerey, 3
INDEX weird vs boring, 61 ZIP, 108
141

Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics - Spaces

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics - Spaces

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

2300 Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics: Spaces

Michael D. Alder February 18, 2010

CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 58 58 60 63 63 68 74 75 76 82 85 87 91 97 97 98 99 102 103 103 107 113

3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8

115 . 115 . 115 . 116 . 118 . 121 . 122 . 123 . 123

1.2. COURSE OBJECTIVES AND BOOKS TO GET

Course Objectives and Books to get

Denitions and why we like them

End of Awful Warning

1.3. DEFINITIONS AND WHY WE LIKE THEM

Latin versus Algebra

Chapter 2 Sets and Logic

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

A variant of Modus Ponens(called in some quarters Modus Morons) goes:

Modus Morons An invalid but popular rule of inference:

I told you it was popular.

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

More about Sets

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

2.3. MORE ABOUT SETS

Aside: Russells Paradox

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

The Algebra of Sets

The union of A and B denoted A B, is dened to be the set AB {x : x A or x B}

2.3. MORE ABOUT SETS

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

Cartesian Products of Sets

2.3. MORE ABOUT SETS

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

Denition 2.3.9. If Uj , j J is any collection of sets, Uj

Exercise 2.3.9. translate into English! Exercise 2.3.10. What is

Denition 2.3.10. If Uj , j J is any collection of sets, Uj

Exercise 2.3.11. translate this into English! Exercise 2.3.12. What is

Which is a pity, since there would seem to be considerable tax advantages.

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

Equivalence Relations and Partitions

That is, if the subset {(x, x) : x A} . (ii) is called symmetric i x, y A, xyyx

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

Finite and Innite sets

CHAPTER 2. SETS AND LOGIC

Chapter 3 Metric Spaces

50 or distance on a set X is a map

CHAPTER 3. METRIC SPACES

Denition of a Metric Space

3.2. DEFINITION OF A METRIC SPACE

CHAPTER 3. METRIC SPACES

Examples of Metric Spaces

Proposition 3.3.1. R is a metric space with

3.3. EXAMPLES OF METRIC SPACES

CHAPTER 3. METRIC SPACES

Taking the square root of both sides we deduce x+y x + y (3.1)