3.1k views
5 votes
Give an example of two closed subsets A and B of the real line R such that d(A, B) = 0 but A ∩ B is an empty set.

a) A = [0, 1], B = (1, 2)
b) A = 1, 2, 3, B = 2, 3, 4
c) A = [0, 1], B = [1, 2]
d) A = (-[infinity], 0) ∪ (1, [infinity]), B = (0, 1)

1 Answer

3 votes

Final answer:

A closed subset A and B of the real line R such that d(A, B) = 0 but A ∩ B is an empty set is given by the example: A = (-∞, 0) ∪ (1, ∞) and B = (0, 1).

Step-by-step explanation:

A closed subset A and B of the real line R such that d(A, B) = 0 but A ∩ B is an empty set is given by the example:

A = (-∞, 0) ∪ (1, ∞) and B = (0, 1).

To show that A and B are closed subsets, we can start by proving that their complements are open sets. The complement of A is (0, 1), which is an open set, and the complement of B is (-∞, 0) ∪ [1, ∞), which is also an open set. Therefore, A and B are closed subsets.

Next, we need to show that d(A, B) = 0. The distance between two sets A and B is defined as the infimum of the distances between any two points from A and B. In this case, the distance is 0 because for any positive number ε, we can always find points x in A and y in B such that the distance between x and y is less than ε. For example, we can choose x = 1 - ε/2 and y = 1 + ε/2.

Finally, we can see that A ∩ B is an empty set because there are no common points between A and B.

User Rohit Dalal
by
8.1k points