Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2005/ii/paper-2/11f/i/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 ii Paper 2 11F i Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The Baire category theorem says that in a nonempty complete metric space, a countable intersection of open dense subsets is dense. Equivalently, such a space cannot be a countable union of nowhere dense sets: a set is nowhere dense when the interior of its closure is empty. Indeed the complements of those closures are open dense; their intersection is dense and in particular nonempty, so a countable union of the original sets cannot exhaust the space. The same argument shows that the complement of such a union is dense.
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