Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2004/ib/paper-2/14g/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 ib Paper 2 14G Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The complete metric space supplies a counterexample: are descending nonempty closed sets, but no real number belongs to them all.
Now assume shrinking diameters. Choose . Given , choose so that . Whenever , both chosen points lie in , so . Thus is a Cauchy sequence. By completeness it converges to some . For each fixed , the tail lies in the closed set , so its limit lies there too. Hence . Any two points of this intersection have distance at most every , so their distance is zero. The shrinking intersection contains exactly one point. This is the Cantor intersection theorem.
For the dense-open conclusion, begin inside an arbitrary nonempty open set ; taking gives the requested existence. Since is a dense subset, choose and small enough that the closed ball is contained in . Here denotes the closed ball, not an assumption about the closure of the open ball.
Inductively, the open ball meets the dense open set . Choose in that intersection and a positive radius so small thatSuch a radius exists by openness and the triangle inequality. These nonempty closed sets descend and have diameters at most . The preceding result gives a point in every , hence in and every . Therefore is nonempty; in fact it is dense in . This proves the relevant Baire category theorem directly, without assuming closed balls are compact.
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