Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/iii/paper-19/6/iv/b/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 19 6 iv b Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Use the displayed family to form the coherent-injection Aronszajn tree. A node at level is a restriction for some . Every such node differs only finitely from . There are countably many finite subsets of the countable domain and countably many assignments of natural-number values to each, so there are only countably many possible finite modifications. Hence each level is countable. It is nonempty because it contains .
Every shorter restriction of a node is again a node, and its predecessors have order type its domain ordinal. Thus this is a set-theoretic tree of height . If it had an uncountable chain in a partial order, its domain heights would be unbounded in , since the levels below any countable height contain only countably many nodes. The union of that chain in a partial order would be an injection , impossible. ThereforeThe countable-level proof uses coherence, whereas the no-branch proof uses injectivity; the two features play different roles.
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