Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 ib Paper 2 10E c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Let . It is nonempty, closed and bounded in finite-dimensional Euclidean space, hence compact by the Heine-Borel theorem. The strict distance inequality again makes Lipschitz continuous. If , choose a sequence converging to . Then , and continuity gives , so . This proves .
The restriction to satisfies strict distance decrease on a compact metric space, so part (b) produces a fixed point there. If a second fixed point existed anywhere in , the same strict distance inequality applied to the two points would contradict equality of their distance. Therefore the fixed point is unique in all of . This is the bounded-orbit fixed point for a strictly distance-decreasing Euclidean map.