Proof that $\sup \frac{1}{A} = \frac{1}{\inf A}$

real-analysissupremum-and-infimum

I know this question was already asked a couple of times, but I didn't understand any of the answers (or they were solved without $ \epsilon $ which is want I want to practice according to my book), so I want to ask it again. Here is the question from a text book:

Let $A$ be a nonempty $\subset \mathbb{R}$ such that $\alpha:= \inf A > 0.\ $ Define
$\frac{1}{A} := \left\{ \frac{1}{a} : a \in A \right\}.\ $ Prove that $\sup
\frac{1}{A} = \frac{1}{\inf A}.$

This is what I got so far: $ 0 < \alpha \leq a \implies \frac{1}{\alpha} \geq \frac{1}{a} $, so $\frac{1}{\alpha}$ is an upper bound for $ \frac{1}{A} $. The next step would be to show that it is the smallest upper bound, so there always exists $a_0$ such that $ \frac{1}{a_0} > \frac{1}{\alpha} – \epsilon $ for all $\epsilon > 0$

This is where I'm stuck. A hint in the text book is to take a look at $ \frac{1}{\alpha} – \frac{1}{a} $ which is obviously $ \geq 0 $ but I don't see how that is supposed to help me.

Best Answer

Suppose $\frac{1}{\alpha}$ is not the least upper bound, then there is some other upper bound, call it $\frac{1}{a'} $ for which

$$0<\frac{1}{a'}<\frac{1}{\alpha} $$

Then since $\frac{1}{a'}$ is an upper bound of $\frac{1}{A}$, we have that

$$ \forall_{a\in A}[\frac{1}{a'} \geq \frac{1}{a}] $$

Or reversing the ratios,

$$ \forall_{a\in A}[a'\leq a] $$

So $a'$ is a lower bound for $A$

Then since $\frac{1}{a'}<\frac{1}{\alpha}$ we get that $ a'>\alpha$ which means there is some lower bound for $A$ which is larger that $\alpha$, in contradiction to $\alpha$ being the greatest lower bound.