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Let $A$ and $B$ be two sets of real numbers. Define the distance from $A$ to $B$ by $\rho (A,B) = \inf \{ |a-b| : a \in A, b \in B\} \;.$ Give an example to show that the distance between two closed sets can be $0$ even if the two sets are disjoint.

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    Exercise for you: show that if this is true, $A$ or $B$ must be non-compact.2012-05-16

3 Answers 3

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Let $A = \mathbb N$ and let $B = \left\{n+\frac{1}{2n} :n\in \mathbb N\right\}$. Then A and B are closed and disjoint, but $\inf \{|a−b|:a \in A,b \in B\} = \inf \left | \frac{1}{2n}\right| = 0$

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    @ThomasAhle the union of *any* number of open sets (which intervals can be regarded as) is an open set. The easiest way to see that $A$ and $B$ (and hence $A\cup B$) are each closed is to note that you can put an open interval around any point in the complement that resides entirely in the complement.2017-07-13
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Consider the sets $\mathbb N$ and $\mathbb N\pi = \{n\pi : n\in\mathbb N\}$. Then $\mathbb N\cap \mathbb N\pi=\emptyset$ as $\pi$ is irrational, but we have points in $\mathbb N\pi$ which lie arbitrarily close to the integers.

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    This is a nice example, but showing that $\mathbb{N}\pi$ is arbitrarily close to $\mathbb{N}$ is probably harder than the simplest example to original question :).2012-05-16
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Let $A$ be the set of positive integers, and let $B$ be the set of all numbers of the form $n+1/n$, where $n$ ranges over the integers $\gt 1$.

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    @MartinSleziak: Thanks for spotting this. I had forgotten that $1+1=2$.2012-05-16