Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-analysis-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2009/a/1/i/solution

A normed vector space is a real or complex vector space with a norm satisfying positivity, definiteness, absolute homogeneity and the triangle inequality. It is separable if it has a countable dense subset for the norm distance.
First prove the unlabelled general assertions. If is dense in , choose whenever that intersection is nonempty. These choices form a countable subset of . For any and , choose with and with . The corresponding intersection is nonempty and . Thus every subspace of a separable normed vector space is separable.
If a countable has dense linear span, take all finite linear combinations of its elements with rational coefficients in the real case, or coefficients in in the complex case. This set is countable and dense in the linear span, by approximating the finitely many coefficients of each combination. Its closure is therefore , proving separability. Conversely, a countable dense set already has dense linear span.
For , use all finitely supported sequences with coordinates in . Truncate a sequence tending to zero to control its supremum tail, then approximate the finite initial coordinates. This produces a countable dense subset, so

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