Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 ib Paper 1 11G c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
We argue by contradiction using the previous subsequence construction. If is not complete, choose a Cauchy sequence with no limit in . None of its can be zero: if , then , giving a limit in . The construction therefore produces pairwise distinct withLet . This subset is closed in . Indeed, if a point lay in its closure, there would be points of tending to . Their indices must be unbounded, because the distance from to any finite subset of is positive. Passing to increasing indices gives a convergent subsequence of the original Cauchy sequence. Part (a) would then make the whole sequence converge to , a contradiction.
Now define by . Distinctness makes this well-defined, and the displayed inequality makes it a contraction mapping with constant at most . It has no fixed point, contradicting the assumed property of closed subsets. ConsequentlyThis is the converse direction of contraction property of closed subsets characterizes completeness.