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Possible Duplicate:
Uniform continuity

I have a question which is:

If ${f(x)}$ is uniformly continuous at ${(0,1)}$ then is it bounded at ${(0,1)}$?

This sound like it's correct to me but I can't see why exactly (Or maybe it's wrong :P).

Could someone help me figure out the truth here? :) Thanks!

  • 2
    "on" not "at"...2011-12-02

2 Answers 2

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By uniform continuity there is an $n\in{\mathbb N}_{\geq 1}$ such that $0 implies $|f(y)-f(x)|<1$. Put $x_k:={k\over n+1}$ $\ (1\leq k\leq n)$. Then any $y \in \ ]0,1[\ $ is at distance ${}<{1\over n}$ from an $x_k$. Therefore we have

$|f(y)| < \max_{1\leq k\leq n} |f(x_k)| + 1\ =:\ M$

for all $y \in \ ]0,1[\ $.

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    Right, it was in the question...2014-06-18
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$f$ would indeed be bounded.

$f$ is continuous on $(0,1)$; thus, if it were not bounded on $(0,1)$, there would exist $x_n\nearrow 1$ or $x_n\searrow 0$ with $f(x_n)\rightarrow\infty$ or $f(x_n)\rightarrow-\infty$. But, none of these options can happen due to the following facts: 1) uniformly continuous functions map Cauchy sequences to Cauchy sequences. 2) Cauchy sequences are bounded.

Fact 1) is easily proven: Let $\{x_n\}$ be Cauchy and $\epsilon>0$. Let $\delta$ be such that $|f(x)-f(y)|\lt\epsilon$ whenever $|x-y|<\delta$. Now choose $N$ so that $m,n> N$ implies $|x_n-x_m|<\delta$. We then have for any $n, m>N$ that $|f(x_n)-f(x_m)|<\epsilon$. Thus, $\{f(x_n)\}$ is Cauchy.

Fact 2) is easy to prove also, but I'll leave this to the interested reader.

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    I read about 4-5 proofs with $\epsilon=1$, $N\delta$, etc, I didn't get them. But your first fact is what made it finally click. Thanks.2014-06-17