I am looking at uniform continuity (for my exam) at the moment and I'm fine with showing that a function is uniformly continuous but I'm having a bit more trouble showing that it is not uniformly continuous, for example:
show that $x^4$ is not uniformly continuous on $\mathbb{R}$, so my solution would be something like:
Assume that it is uniformly continuous then:
$$\forall\epsilon\geq0\exists\delta>0:\forall{x,y}\in\mathbb{R}\ \mbox{if}\ |x-y|<\delta \mbox{then} |x^4-y^4|<\epsilon$$
Take $x=\frac{\delta}{2}+\frac{1}{\delta}$ and $y=\frac{1}{\delta}$ then we have that $|x-y|=|\frac{\delta}{2}+\frac{1}{\delta}-\frac{1}{\delta}|=|\frac{\delta}{2}|<\delta$ however
$$|f(x)-f(y)|=|\frac{\delta^3}{8}+3\frac{\delta}{4}+\frac{3}{2\delta}|$$
Now if $\delta\leq 1$ then $|f(x)-f(y)|>\frac{3}{4}$ and if $\delta\geq 1$ then $|f(x)-f(y)|>\frac{3}{4}$ so there exists not $\delta$ for $\epsilon < \frac{3}{4}$ and we have a contradiction.
So I was wondering if this was ok (I think it's fine) but also if this was the general way to go about showing that some function is not uniformly continuous? Or if there was any other ways of doing this that are not from the definition?
Thanks very much for any help
Best Answer
To show that it is not uniformly continuous on the whole line, there are two usual (and similar) ways to do it:
First way:
Fix $\delta > 0$, set $y = x+\delta$ and check $$\lim_{x\to\infty}|x^4 - (x+\delta)^4| = \lim_{x\to\infty} 4x^3\delta + o(x^3) = +\infty.$$
Second way:
Fix $\epsilon > 0$, thus $$|x^4-y^4| < \epsilon $$ $$|(x-y)(x+y)(x^2+y^2)| < \epsilon $$ $$|x-y|\cdot|x+y|\cdot|x^2+y^2| < \epsilon $$ $$|x-y| < \frac{\epsilon}{|x+y|\cdot|x^2+y^2|} $$
but this describes a necessary condition, so $\delta$ has to be at least as small as the right side, i.e.
$$|x-y| < \delta \leq \frac{\epsilon}{|x+y|\cdot|x^2+y^2|} $$
so if either of $x$ or $y$ tends to infinity then $\delta$ tends to $0$.
Hope that helps ;-)
Edit: after explanation and calculation fixes, I don't disagree with your proof.