Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 ib Paper 2 4E ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
There is a small defect in the printed definition: the listed family omits and is not a topology, since . We use the intended upper-ray topology on the real line, obtained by adjoining to that family.
Take . For every real ,has finite complement and is therefore open in the cofinite topology. The inverse images of the empty set and the whole line are also open. Hence this nonconstant function is a continuous map for the corrected upper-ray topology on the real line. The same inverse-image calculation verifies the condition for every ray literally listed in the question.