Past exam of the logic and set theory course of the University of Oxford 2009 B 5 vii Solution 2026-10-31
For the cardinality of total orders on a countably infinite set, a total order on is a subset of , so there are at most such orders. To obtain the lower bound, associate to every binary sequence an order by placing the two-element blocks in increasing order of . Inside block , use when and reverse them when .
This is a total order for every sequence. Distinct sequences differ on the comparison of some adjacent pair and therefore produce distinct relations. Thus binary sequences inject into the order set, provingThe construction counts distinct orders on the labelled set, even though the resulting order types are all isomorphic to the usual natural-number order.