Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 ia Paper 4 7E ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
Use . If a bijection maps onto the even natural numbers, its restriction is a bijection from onto an infinite set. Moreover, its restriction to the complement of maps onto the odd natural numbers. Both sets are therefore infinite.
Conversely, suppose that and its complement are infinite. Applying the increasing enumeration of an infinite subset of natural numbers to each givesFor completeness, successively choose the least unused member. The process never stops because the set is infinite, and it lists every member: an omitted member would have infinitely many selected natural numbers below it, which is impossible. DefineThis is injective on each list, their images are disjoint, and together their images cover . Thus it is a bijection and maps onto . Both infinitude conditions are necessary and sufficient. If a convention includes zero in , index each list from zero and use , instead.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ia Paper 4 6D b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
Use the well-order of the natural numbers to list in increasing order. Define recursivelyThe remaining set is nonempty because is infinite and only a finite set has been removed. Each chosen value is larger than the preceding one, so is an injective function.
To prove it is a surjective function, fix . If were never selected, every selected minimum would be at most . This would put infinitely many distinct values into the finite set , a contradiction. HenceThe increasing enumeration of an infinite subset of natural numbers uses no arbitrary choice: each next element is the uniquely determined minimum.