Exercise 8.1.1

Prove: If a set A can be linearly ordered, then every system of finite subsets of A has a choice function. (It does not follow from the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms that every set can be linearly ordered.)

Answers

Lemma 1. Any linear ordering of a finite set is a well-ordering.

Proof. We show this by strong induction on the cardinality of the set. So consider natural number n and suppose that all linear ordered sets of cardinality k < n are well-orderings. Also suppose that ( A , ) is any linearly ordered set with | A | = n . Consider any nonempty B A so that there is a b B . Then clearly C = B { b } is also a finite set with C B A so that | C | < n . Clearly also C is linearly ordered by so that, by the induction hypothesis, C is well-ordered by . Now, if C = , then it follows that B = { b } , which clearly has least element b . On the other hand, if C , then it has a least element c since it is well-ordered. Since is a linear ordering, it has to be that either c b or b c .

Case: c b . Then consider any x B . If x = b then obviously c b = x . If x b then x C = B { b } so that again c x since c is the least element of C . This shows that c is the least element of B since x was arbitrary.

Case: b c . Then consider any x B . If x = b then obviously b b = x . If x b then x C = B { b } so that b c x since c is the least element of C . This shows that b is the least element of B since x was arbitrary.

Hence in all cases we have that B has a -least element. This shows that is a well-ordering of A since B A was arbitrary. This completes the inductive proof. □

Main Problem.

Proof. Suppose that A is a set that can be linearly ordered and suppose that is a such a linear ordering. Suppose also that S is a system of finite subsets of A . Then clearly any B S is finite and linearly ordered by . We then have that is a well-ordering of B by Lemma 1. So we then set

f ( B ) = { the least element of  B  according to  B B =

for any B S . Clearly then f is a choice function for S . □

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2024-07-15 11:42
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