Past exam of the options II course of the University of Oxford 2008 printed variant E E3 a Solution 2026-10-31
For a fixed centre , the triangle inequality gives , so the distance-to-centre function is continuous. Its preimage of is the closed ball, hence is closed. Since that closed set contains the corresponding open ball, it contains its closure:Here the bar on the right denotes a closed ball, while the bar on the left denotes closure.
The function is continuous if it is continuous at every point of . Equivalently, the preimage of each open set in is open in .
The difference map is continuous, and is its preimage of the open set . Thus is open in the product.
The class of is . A punctured plane is path-connected: two points can be joined by a polygonal path avoiding the deleted point. Consequently every class is connected.
The projection is onto, since for every . It is continuous as a restricted coordinate projection. If is open in , it is open in the product because itself is open. For a point , the product-topology basis gives open sets with . Then . Hence is open.
The map is constant exactly on the equivalence classes, so it induces a bijection . It is continuous by the defining property of the quotient topology. It is also open: for quotient-open , is open. ThusThe plane is connected, and the classes are connected, so part (b) now yields is connected.
Every open set of the subspace is for some . Since takes values in ,The right side is open in by the assumed continuity of the composition. Hence preimages of every -open set are open, proving is continuous.
Choose and let be the identity set map . The composition is the inclusion and is continuous by part (i). The hypothesized universal implication therefore says that the identity mapis continuous. Its preimage of a set is itself, so every such lies in . ThereforeCombining this with part (ii), when both properties hold, characterizes the subspace topology uniquely.
Fix . Since is open, choose an open ball . For any in this ball the segment remains in it. For each coordinate , the chain rule givesThe ordinary mean value theorem therefore gives for every coordinate, hence . Thus is a locally constant function.
For each , its preimage is a union of such open balls, so is open in . Its complement in is the union of the other fibers and is also open. If is nonempty and connected, the nonempty fiber through any chosen point is both open and closed in , and must be all of . ThereforeThe empty-domain case is vacuous. Notice that continuity of was never needed.
Suppose is continuous and . Every open neighbourhood of has an open preimage containing , which meets . Hence meets , proving .
Conversely, suppose the indicated inclusion holds for every subset. To prove continuity, take any closed set and put . Since and is closed,Thus , so is closed. Every closed set has closed preimage, which is the closed-set characterization of continuity.This is the closure characterization of continuity; it requires no Hausdorff or metric hypothesis.
Because is surjective, is infinite whenever is infinite; a finite preimage could have only finitely many image points. By part (i), its closure is . Apply part (a)(ii):The other inclusion is automatic, soBoth continuity and surjectivity enter the argument.
For a nonempty open subset of the quotient, is nonempty and open in the cofinite space. Thereforeis finite. Surjectivity implies that is finite as well: it is the image of that finite preimage. Hence every quotient-open set is cofinite or empty, proving the desired inclusion.
Equality is not necessary. Give its cofinite topology and use two equivalence classes, the even and odd integers. Neither singleton of the quotient is open, since its preimage and its complement are both infinite. The quotient is the two-point indiscrete topology, whereas the cofinite topology on a finite two-point set is discrete.This is the quotient topology of a cofinite space phenomenon, not a failure of continuity of the projection.
TakeIt is continuous for the Euclidean metric, since . But the basic open set of the target Sorgenfrey line has preimageThis is not open in the source Sorgenfrey line: every basic neighbourhood of contains positive points. Thus is not continuous for the lower limit topology.
Use the Heaviside step function with the value at the jump chosen as follows:For any open set in the target Sorgenfrey line, its preimage is one of , , , and . All four are open in the source Sorgenfrey line, so is continuous. In the Euclidean topology, the preimage of is , which is not open. Hence the same function is not continuous as a usual real-to-real map.
Use positive indices and write . SetFor fixed , this function is a homeomorphism from the unit circle to : it scales its radius to and translates its centre to . Thus it takes values in the Hawaiian earring and is surjective onto . It is continuous on each open slice ; since these slices form an open cover of , is continuous on the whole product topology.
Distinct circles meet only at . To see this directly, their equations areFor , subtraction gives , then . Each slice contains exactly one preimage of , namely . Therefore the only nonsingleton fibre of is .
Let be the quotient map collapsing . The universal property of the quotient topology supplies a unique continuous map with . The fibre calculation proves injectivity, and surjectivity follows from that of . Hence is the required continuous bijection.
Let be an open cover of by open subsets of . The continuity of makes each preimage open in , and these preimages cover . By compactness, choose withApplying gives . Thus every open cover of has a finite subcover, proving the continuous image of a compact space theorem. A cover by sets open in gives the same argument after expressing them as intersections with ambient open sets.
Here must denote the closed disc , as its boundary points participate in the identification. For , defineThe Pythagorean trigonometric identity gives , so the image lies in the sphere . Away from the origin the formula is continuous. At the origin, the first two coordinates have absolute value at most and the third tends to , proving continuity there as well.
Every boundary point maps to , while the origin maps to . For a point with , there is a unique with , and its unique preimage isThis point has radius , because . The two poles have the preimages already described. Thus is surjective and its fibers are exactly the prescribed equivalence classes.
The closed disc is compact by the Heine-Borel theorem, and is Hausdorff with the subspace topology from Euclidean space. The preceding result gives the homeomorphism
Use the equivalence relation induced by a function:Equality in supplies reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity, so this is an equivalence relation. Define by . It is well-defined; it is injective by the definition of and surjective because is surjective.
For an open set ,is open by continuity of . The quotient topology therefore makes open, proving that is continuous.
The continuous image of a compact space theorem applied to makes compact. If is closed in , it is compact, and is compact in the Hausdorff space , hence closed. Thus is a closed map. Its inverse function is continuous, since its preimage of is precisely . We have proved that is a homeomorphism, including the compact-to-Hausdorff continuous bijection theorem used in the argument.
The quotient set consists of the equivalence classes . Its collapsing map is the canonical projection of a quotient setEquip this set with the quotient topology:This is a topology because preimages preserve arbitrary unions, finite intersections, the empty set, and the whole set. The resulting topological space is the quotient space. The displayed rule immediately implies that the preimage of every open set is open, so is continuous; it is also surjective.
Any two nonempty open sets of the infinite cofinite topology intersect: their complements are finite sets, so the complement of their intersection is finite and cannot be all of .
Suppose the quotient space had distinct points with disjoint open neighbourhoods . Since the quotient map is surjective, both preimages would be nonempty. Since is continuous, these would be disjoint open subsets of with its cofinite topology, contradicting the observation above. Thus any such quotient space with at least two points is not Hausdorff.
True. Choose the irrational number , and partition the rational numbers intoNo endpoint is rational, so these disjoint sets cover . Each is nonempty by the density of the rational numbers, and each is clopen in the subspace topology on .
Let two rational numbers be equivalent exactly when they belong to the same . The bijectionis well-defined. For every subset , the preimage of under the canonical projection of a quotient set is , which is open in . Thus every subset of is open: its quotient topology is the discrete topology. The usual subspace topology on the integers is also the discrete topology, because . Consequently is a homeomorphism.
False. Give its usual topology, identify all points of with one another, and leave every other point in a singleton equivalence class. Take the closed set .
Its image is a singleton in the quotient space, but its full preimage, also called the saturation of a subset, isThis is not closed in , since belongs to its closure. In the quotient topology, a subset is closed exactly when its preimage is closed, by applying the defining open-set rule to complements. Thus is not closed, and this quotient map is not a closed map.
True. The canonical projection of a quotient set is a continuous surjection. Its image is compact by the continuous image of a compact space theorem.
For connectedness, if formed a separation of a topological space of , then the preimages would be disjoint nonempty open sets covering , contradicting its connectedness. This proves the continuous image of a connected space theorem in this case. Hence the quotient space is both compact and connected.