Complete the following sentence "A set

fails to be a neighborhood of a number

when for every number

..."
A set

fails to be a neighborhood of a number

when for every number

the interval

contains at least one number that does not belong to

.
Explain carefully why the assertion

that
was made
above
is true. You will need to make use of
an
earlier result.
Since the number

belongs to the interval

for every positive integer

we have

Now
we need to show that

is the only number in the set

.
Suppose that

.
Using the fact that

and
that
earlier result, choose a positive integer

such that


Since
we have found a value of

for which

fails to belong to the interval

we know that

Thus

is the only number in the set

,
which is what we wanted to prove.
Given that

is an interior point of

and that

explain why

must be an interior point of


Using the fact that

is an interior point of

,
choose

such that

Since

we therefore have

Therefore

is an interior point of

.
Suppose that

is a real number and that

Prove that the following two conditions are equivalent:
The set

is a neighborhood of the number

It is possible to find two numbers

and

such that

Solution: To
prove that condition a implies condition b we assume that

is
a neighborhood of the number

.
Choose

such
that

By
defining

and

we
obtain two numbers

and

such
that

and
such that

Now to prove that condition b implies condition a we assume
that condition b holds. Choose numbers

and

such
that

and
such that

Using
the fact that the interval

is
a neighborhood of

,
choose

such
that

Since

we
have shown that

is
a neighborhood of

.
Suppose that

and

are two different real numbers. Prove that it is possible to find a
neighborhood

of

and a neighborhood

of

such that


Solution: We may
assume, without loss of generality, that

.
Choose a number

between

and

.
The intervals

and

are,
respectively, neighborhoods of

and

and
the intersection of these two intervals is empty.
Given that

is a set of real numbers and that

is an upper bound of

explain why

cannot be a neighborhood of

.
Solution: If

is
any positive number then, since all of the numbers between

and

must
lie in

,
the interval

cannot
be included in

.
Given that a set

of real numbers is nonempty and bounded above, explain why neither

nor

can be a neighborhood of


Solution: We see
from Exercise 6 that

is
not a neighborhood of

.
Now we observe that, whenever

,
since the number

fails
to be an upper bound of

,
there must be members of

in
the interval

.
Therefore, whenever

,
the interval

fails
to be included in the set

and
so

must
also fail to be a neighborhood of

.
Suppose that

and

are sets of real numbers and that

is an interior point of the set

Is it true that

must either be an interior point of

or an interior point of


Hint: The answer
is no. Give an example to show what can go wrong.
Suppose that

and

are sets of real numbers and that

is an interior point both of

and of

Is it true that

must be an interior point of the set


Yes it is true. Suppose that

is an interior point of both of the sets

and

.
Choose a number

such that

and
choose a number

such that

We
now define

to be the smaller of the two numbers

and

and we observe that

Suppose that

and

are real numbers and that

is a neighborhood of

Prove that the set

defined by

is
a neighborhood of the number


Solution: We
need to find a number

such
that the interval

is
included in

.
Using the fact that

is
a neighborhood of

,
we choose

such
that

Now
given any number

in
the interval

we
deduce from the fact that

that

and
therefore we know that

.
Therefore, since

we
know that

and
we have shown that
