Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-topology-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2014/1/a/ii/solution

Suppose is continuous and . Every open neighbourhood of has an open preimage containing , which meets . Hence meets , proving .
Conversely, suppose the indicated inclusion holds for every subset. To prove continuity, take any closed set and put . Since and is closed,
Thus , so is closed. Every closed set has closed preimage, which is the closed-set characterization of continuity.
This is the closure characterization of continuity; it requires no Hausdorff or metric hypothesis.

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