True. Choose the irrational number , and partition the rational numbers into
No endpoint is rational, so these disjoint sets cover . Each is nonempty by the density of the rational numbers, and each is clopen in the subspace topology on .
Let two rational numbers be equivalent exactly when they belong to the same . The bijection
is well-defined. For every subset , the preimage of under the canonical projection of a quotient set is , which is open in . Thus every subset of is open: its quotient topology is the discrete topology. The usual subspace topology on the integers is also the discrete topology, because . Consequently is a homeomorphism.
False. Give its usual topology, identify all points of with one another, and leave every other point in a singleton equivalence class. Take the closed set .
Its image is a singleton in the quotient space, but its full preimage, also called the saturation of a subset, is
This is not closed in , since belongs to its closure. In the quotient topology, a subset is closed exactly when its preimage is closed, by applying the defining open-set rule to complements. Thus is not closed, and this quotient map is not a closed map.
Any two nonempty open sets of the infinite cofinite topology intersect: their complements are finite sets, so the complement of their intersection is finite and cannot be all of .
Suppose the quotient space had distinct points with disjoint open neighbourhoods . Since the quotient map is surjective, both preimages would be nonempty. Since is continuous, these would be disjoint open subsets of with its cofinite topology, contradicting the observation above. Thus any such quotient space with at least two points is not Hausdorff.
Here must denote the closed disc , as its boundary points participate in the identification. For , define
The Pythagorean trigonometric identity gives , so the image lies in the sphere . Away from the origin the formula is continuous. At the origin, the first two coordinates have absolute value at most and the third tends to , proving continuity there as well.
Every boundary point maps to , while the origin maps to . For a point with , there is a unique with , and its unique preimage is
This point has radius , because . The two poles have the preimages already described. Thus is surjective and its fibers are exactly the prescribed equivalence classes.
The closed disc is compact by the Heine-Borel theorem, and is Hausdorff with the subspace topology from Euclidean space. The preceding result gives the homeomorphism
Use the equivalence relation induced by a function:
Equality in supplies reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity, so this is an equivalence relation. Define by . It is well-defined; it is injective by the definition of and surjective because is surjective.
For an open set ,
is open by continuity of . The quotient topology therefore makes open, proving that is continuous.
The continuous image of a compact space theorem applied to makes compact. If is closed in , it is compact, and is compact in the Hausdorff space , hence closed. Thus is a closed map. Its inverse function is continuous, since its preimage of is precisely . We have proved that is a homeomorphism, including the compact-to-Hausdorff continuous bijection theorem used in the argument.
The quotient set consists of the equivalence classes . Its collapsing map is the canonical projection of a quotient set
Equip this set with the quotient topology:
This is a topology because preimages preserve arbitrary unions, finite intersections, the empty set, and the whole set. The resulting topological space is the quotient space. The displayed rule immediately implies that the preimage of every open set is open, so is continuous; it is also surjective.
The answer is no, because the number of non-isolated points differs. In , every is an isolated point: a sufficiently small open interval around it contains no other member of . The only non-isolated point is , since every neighbourhood of contains some .
In the product topology, is an isolated point exactly when both coordinates are isolated points of . One direction follows because the product of two open singletons is open. For the other, any basic open rectangle containing contains another point if either coordinate has no open singleton. Hence the set of non-isolated points of is
which is infinite. A homeomorphism takes open singletons to open singletons, so it induces a bijection between the sets of non-isolated points. A space with just one such point cannot be homeomorphic to a space with infinitely many.
Removing from the closed interval leaves the separation of a topological space
Thus is a cut point of .
In contrast, removing any point from the square leaves a path-connected space. To prove this, take distinct . Choose an interior point outside the two lines through and . Such a choice exists: a small circle in the interior meets each of those lines in at most two points. Since is a convex set, the line segments and stay in ; our choice of ensures that both avoid . Their concatenation is a continuous path from to in .
The product topology on agrees with its usual subspace topology in the Euclidean plane. If were a homeomorphism, its restriction would give a homeomorphism
The domain is connected, since path connectedness implies connectedness, while the target is not connected. This contradicts the preservation of connectedness by a homeomorphism.
Suppose were compact. By the compact subset of a Hausdorff space theorem, it would be closed in , hence closed in . The singleton is also closed in the Hausdorff space : each other point has an open neighbourhood avoiding .
Consequently both and are clopen in . They are disjoint, nonempty, and cover , giving a separation of a topological space in contradiction to the connectedness of . Thus is not compact.
The intended hypothesis is that is not connected. The original PDF has the same grammatical ambiguity as the transcription. If only were assumed not connected, the assertion would fail for the discrete space with its usual metric and the closed subset : two disjoint sets cannot both meet that singleton.
Under the intended reading, choose a separation of a topological space . Both and are nonempty and closed in , because each is the complement of the other relatively open part. Since is closed in , both are closed in .
For a nonempty subset of the metric space , the distance to a set satisfies
Indeed, the triangle inequality gives , and swapping proves the bound. Thus the two distance to a set functions below are continuous. Set
These are disjoint open sets. For , we have and , since is closed and . Hence . Similarly . Therefore and both and meet , as required. The construction is a concrete instance of the normality of every metric space.
Use the Sierpiński space with topology . The singleton is compact: from any open cover, choose one member containing . But is not open, so is not closed. This also exhibits why the Hausdorff hypothesis in the preceding proof matters.
Let be compact, with a Hausdorff space. The empty set is closed, so suppose . Fix . For each , the Hausdorff property supplies disjoint open neighbourhoods of and of .
The form an open cover of . Choose a finite subcover and put . This is an open neighbourhood of . If a point of belonged to , it would belong to some as well as , a contradiction. Hence . Every point of the complement has such an open neighbourhood, so is open and is closed.
Let be an open cover of by open subsets of . The continuity of makes each preimage open in , and these preimages cover . By compactness, choose with
Applying gives . Thus every open cover of has a finite subcover, proving the continuous image of a compact space theorem. A cover by sets open in gives the same argument after expressing them as intersections with ambient open sets.
Give the nonempty subset its subspace topology. It is compact if every open cover admits a finite subcover. Equivalently, whenever with each open in , there are such that .
It is connected if it has no separation of a topological space: there are no disjoint nonempty open subsets of with . Here openness is relative to the subspace topology; equivalently, the only clopen sets of are and .
Every complete polygon edge pairing gives a compact connected surface with empty manifold boundary. Here is the local reason at the vertices. Replace each polygon corner by a small link interval. The polygon edge pairings identify all endpoints of these link intervals in pairs. In a given vertex equivalence class, the resulting graph is connected: the endpoint identifications generating that vertex equivalence class also connect its corner intervals. Every link graph vertex has degree of a vertex two, so the graph is a circle. Its topological cone is a disc, giving the required local surface model. Edge and face CW cell interiors have the usual disc neighbourhoods as well. A finite triangulation compatible with the polygon edge pairings realizes the result as a finite simplicial complex, giving a Hausdorff, second-countable space.
For every such surface, . If it is orientable, the classification of compact surfaces gives , so or . If it is a nonorientable surface, write for its nonorientable genus; then gives . The exhaustive list is therefore
To prove that every listed possibility actually occurs, the following six-letter boundary words specify complete pairings of a hexagon:
The vertex counts follow by matching starts and ends of equally directed arrows, just as in part (b). The first and third words pair every letter with its inverse, giving orientable surfaces. Each other word contains a letter twice with the same sign, giving a nonorientable surface: an orientation on the face would induce equal, rather than opposite, boundary directions along that glued pair. With the displayed Euler characteristics, the classification of compact surfaces identifies the examples exactly as listed. All five types occur, and no others occur.
A complete pairing of the six polygon edges leaves three edges and one face as CW cells, together with the vertex equivalence classes. If denotes their number, then and the polygonal-schema Euler count gives
A closed orientable surface of genus two has Euler characteristic . Since the Euler characteristic is a topological invariant, no complete pairing of a hexagon can give that surface. Equivalently, the polygonal-schema Euler count bounds the genus of an orientable result by , so .
False: the result is again a torus with one open disc removed. Label the hexagon polygon vertices clockwise from the upper left as
With the same arrow labels as in part (ii),
There are two vertex equivalence classes, and . The free diagonal polygon edges are and . Each joins to , so together they form one boundary component of a surface, not two. At each vertex equivalence class the three corner sectors join in a single chain between these two free polygon edges. Thus each vertex link in a polygonal schema is a closed interval, and the quotient space is an orientable surface with boundary.
Its CW complex has CW cells comprising two vertices, four edges and one face, giving
In contrast, a torus with two disjoint open discs removed has two boundary components of a surface and Euler characteristic . Either topological invariant rules out the proposed homeomorphism.
Figure 1.
After identifying equally labelled arrows, both polygons have one boundary circle; in the hexagon the two free edges join the two vertex classes
. Details.
True. Label the pentagon polygon vertices clockwise from the upper left as
Use for the upward single arrows and for the rightward double arrows in the original diagram. Their endpoint identifications are
All five polygon vertices are therefore identified. The remaining diagonal polygon edge, from to , has its endpoints identified and is the only boundary component of a surface.
The paired polygon edges join half-disc neighbourhoods into disc neighbourhoods. At the common vertex, the five corner sectors join in one chain whose two free ends lie on the unpaired polygon edge: its vertex link in a polygonal schema is a closed interval. Hence that point has a half-disc neighbourhood. This verifies that the quotient space is a surface with boundary, rather than merely counting its CW cells. The paired polygon edges are oppositely traversed around the polygon, so this surface is orientable.
Its CW cells comprise one vertex, three edges (the pair, the pair, and the free polygon edge), and one face. Therefore
The classification of compact surfaces identifies it as a torus with an open disc removed.
Label the hexagon polygon vertices in the direction in which its boundary word is , with the first side running from to . Matching the endpoints according to the arrows gives
Thus the two vertex equivalence classes are and .
The polygonal schema gives a compact connected surface with empty manifold boundary. Interior points have disc neighbourhoods; a paired polygon edge glues two half-disc neighbourhoods into a disc. At each of the two vertex equivalence classes, its three corner sectors join cyclically, so the vertex link in a polygonal schema is a circle, again giving a disc neighbourhood. Pairing every label once positively and once negatively makes these gluings consistent with an orientation, so the resulting surface is orientable.
The resulting CW complex has CW cells comprising two vertices, three edges and one face. Its Euler characteristic is
By the classification of compact surfaces, a connected closed orientable surface with has genus satisfying , hence . The quotient space is a torus.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
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