Section 5: Problem 5 Solution
Working problems is a crucial part of learning mathematics. No one can learn topology merely by poring over the definitions, theorems, and examples that are worked out in the text. One must work part of it out for oneself. To provide that opportunity is the purpose of the exercises.
James R. Munkres
Which of the following subsets of
can be expressed as the cartesian product of subsets of
?
(a)
.
(b)
.
(c)
.
(d)
.
It is possible iff the set of the possible values of
does not depend on the specific values of other
in the sense that, given all values of
for
, the set of possible values of
should be either the empty set or a fixed set
(compare to Exercise 10 of §1). If this is true, then the set
. So, we get the positive answer in (a), (b) and (c). Namely, we have
,
where
, and
, respectively. In (d), when
,
can take values from
only, so the set in (d) is not a cartesian product.