Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 ia Paper 4 5E b iii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
Partition the enumeration of into the pairs , for . An infinite binary sequence determines a bijection : leave the th pair fixed when , and interchange its two elements when . Each element stays in its own pair, so this function is a bijection, indeed its own inverse.
Different binary sequences give different bijections, since a changed bit changes the action on the corresponding pair. We have therefore embedded an uncountable set into . Hence is uncountable, proving uncountability of permutations of a countably infinite set.