« Section 5: Problem 4 Solution

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.