Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2006 / ii / Paper 2 / 22G / Solution

A subset is nowhere dense when its closure has empty interior. It is of first category, or meagre, when it is a countable union of nowhere-dense subsets; otherwise it is of second category.

The Baire category theorem says that in a complete metric space every countable intersection of open dense subsets is dense. To prove it, start inside an arbitrary nonempty open set and choose a closed ball of positive radius there and in the first dense open set. Inductively choose a closed ball inside the interior of the preceding ball and the next dense open set, with radius less than $2^{-n}$. The centres are Cauchy. Completeness gives a limit lying in all the nested closed balls, hence in all the dense open sets and the original open set. Thus a nonempty complete metric space is not meagre in itself.

For $p<r\le \infty$, put $E_m=\{x\in {\ell }^p:\Vert x{\Vert }_p\le m\}$, viewed inside ${\ell }^r$. Necessarily $p<\infty$. Each $E_m$ is closed: convergence in the ${\ell }^r$ norm gives coordinatewise convergence, and every finite partial sum of $\sum |x_i{|}^p$ is bounded by $m^p$ in the limit. Taking the supremum of partial sums proves the assertion.

It has empty interior. Given a point in it and any small ${\ell }^r$ radius, perturb a block of $N$ coordinates by entries of modulus $\delta N^{-1/r}$, choosing signs to avoid cancelling the existing coordinates. The ${\ell }^r$ distance is $\delta$, while the resulting ${\ell }^p$ norm is at least $\delta N^{1/p-1/r}$, exceeding $m$ for large $N$. For $r=\infty$, use entries of modulus $\delta$ on that block. Hence each $E_m$ is nowhere dense, andFor $r=p$, including $p=\infty$, the space is Banach and so second category in itself by Baire. There is no case $r>p$ when $p=\infty$.