General Topology – Does Continuity Depend on the Distance Function?

continuityelementary-set-theorygeneral-topology

I'm working through a book called "Introduction to Topology" and I'm currently working on a chapter regarding metric spaces and continuity. This is how my book defines continuity at a point:

Let $(X,d)$ and $(Y,d')$ be metric spaces, and let $a\in X$. A function $f: X\to Y$ is said to be continuous at the point $a\in X$ if given $\epsilon \gt 0$, there is a $\delta \gt 0$, such that
$$d'(f(x),f(a)) \lt \epsilon$$
whenever $x\in X$ and
$$d(x,a)\lt \delta$$

My question is this: is it possible that a function may be continuous in the metric spaces $(X,d)$ and $(Y, d')$ but not be continuous if one of the distance functions $d$ or $d'$ is changed to a different distance function?

In other words, does the continuity of a function depend on the distance functions used to "measure" it?

Best Answer

Yes. Example: Take the metric where $d(x,x) = 0$ and $d(x,y)=1$ for $x\neq y$ and the Euclid metric. In the first one all functions are continuous and in the second you can find non-continuous functions

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