Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/ii/paper-2/22h/a/solution

If a subspace contains a ball about some , translation gives a ball about zero in , and scaling then gives every vector of . Thus every proper subspace has empty interior.
If a complete infinite-dimensional had a countable Hamel basis , then
Each finite-dimensional subspace is closed and, being proper, nowhere dense. This contradicts the Baire category theorem. The polynomials have the countable Hamel basis and are infinite-dimensional, so no norm can make that whole vector space complete.

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