Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/ii/paper-3/16h/a/solution

By choice-function well-ordering construction, use transfinite recursion to choose
whenever the set on the right is nonempty. The chosen elements are distinct, so if this construction continued through the Hartogs theorem ordinal , the map would inject into , a contradiction. It therefore stops at some ordinal . At the stopping stage every element of has been selected, and hence
is a bijection .
Assuming the axiom of choice, every set has such a choice function on its nonempty subsets. Transporting the membership order on across the bijection well-orders . Thus the axiom of choice implies the well-ordering theorem.

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