Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 ib Paper 2 3B Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Every uniformly continuous function on is bounded. Choose the tolerance for and an integer with . The finitely many centers , , cover the interval by cells of radius . For each , one center satisfies . Thus . This is the uniformly continuous function on a totally bounded set is bounded argument; closedness of the interval is unnecessary.
The reciprocal function is not uniformly continuous on . It is unbounded, already contradicting the preceding result. Directly, and have distance tending to zero while .
The oscillating function is not uniformly continuous either, despite being bounded. TakeTheir distance tends to zero, but their function values are and . The fixed output gap of two contradicts the uniform-continuity condition, for example with .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 ib Paper 2 3F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
A function has uniform continuity if for every there is a such that, for all , implies . The same must work everywhere in .
The product need not be uniformly continuous. Both and are Lipschitz continuous, hence uniformly continuous on , but their product is . For and , the input separation tends to zero whileThis contradicts uniform continuity. The issue is captured by products of unbounded uniformly continuous functions; bounded factors would give a uniform product estimate.
A uniformly continuous function on is bounded. Take for output tolerance one and cover by finitely many intervals of radius less than , centred at points in . Every is within of some , so . This proves the general principle that a uniformly continuous function on a totally bounded set is bounded.
The reciprocal-cosine function is not uniformly continuous. TakeBoth sequences lie in , , but the two function values are and . Their difference is always two, violating the sequential criterion for uniform continuity.