Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 ia Paper 4 2D i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
The intersection is always an equivalence relation. Both component relations contain , so is a reflexive relation. If , both relations relate to , and symmetry in each gives . If and , transitivity in each component gives both and , hence . This is the intersection of equivalence relations; the same argument works for any family of such relations.
For every , both and hold, so the intersection of equivalence relations is reflexive. If , symmetry of both component binary relations gives and , hence . Finally, if and , transitivity in each component gives and , hence . These are precisely the three conditions for an equivalence relation.
For positive integers , partition the nonnegative integers by equality of and separately by equality of . The intersection of equivalence relations gives nonempty intersections of these consecutive blocks. Its boundaries occur at multiples of either or .
Let . Translating by increases the two floor quotients by the fixed integers and , so it preserves all within-block equalities and all block boundaries. Thus the refinement repeats in intervals of length . If lists the multiples of or within one period, its blocks are exactly for and . The pattern repeats, but blocks in different periods remain distinct equivalence classes.