[Math] Finding supremum and infimum of a given set and proving it formally

real-analysissupremum-and-infimum

I'm trying to learn how to find supremum and infimum of a given set as this is essential in my further studying. Here's a problem I want to tackle:

$A=\{\frac{n-k}{n+k}:n,k\in\Bbb{N}\}.$ Find $\sup(A), \inf(A)$.

How to approach such a problem? Any hints? I kinda suspect that $\sup(A)$ will be near 1, but I don't know how to prove it formally and this is really important for me. As for $\inf(A)$ I think -1 might be a good candidate.

PS I can't use derivatives yet, I only learned the definitions of $\sup$ and $\inf$ and I'm allowed to use them in order to prove suspected bounds.

Best Answer

You have come up with good candidates for the supremum and the infimum. The strategy of proof is this. Let the candidate for the supremum be $s$. You first show that $s$ is an upper bound for the set. Then you pick an arbitrary $\epsilon \gt 0$ and show that there exists an element $a \in A$ such that $s \lt a$. For example,

$ \frac{n - k}{n + k} \lt 1$ and hence $1$ is an upper bound for $A$. Let $\epsilon $ be arbitrary. Fix $k$. You can pick $n \in \Bbb N$ such that $\frac{2k}{n + k} \lt \epsilon $. Then, $1 - \epsilon \lt 1 - \frac{2k}{n + k} = \frac{n - k}{n + k} $ and you are done.

For the infimum, you need to show that your candidate $d$ is a lower bound for the set and then if you pick a point which is at an arbitrarily small distance to the right of $d$ on the line, there is an element $a' \in A$ which is less than that point.

First, you can note that $ \frac{|n - k|}{|n + k|} = \frac{|n - k|}{n + k} \lt 1 $ and hence by definition, $-1$ is a lower bound for the set $A$. Now as before let $\epsilon \gt 0$ be arbitrary. We need to show there exists an element $a' \in A$ such that $a' \lt -1 + \epsilon $. Again pick $ \frac{2k}{n + k} \lt \epsilon $ as before which can be done since $n$ can be made arbitrarily large and you will be done.

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