Tuesday, 18 February 2014

limits - Prob. 12, Sec. 5.2, in Bartle & Sherbert's INTRO TO REAL ANALYSIS: Continuity of additive functions



Here is Prob. 12, Sec. 5.2, in the book Introduction To Real Analysis by Robert G. Bartle & Donald R. Sherbert, 4th edition:




A function f:RR is said to be additive if f(x+y)=f(x)+f(y) for all x,y in R. Prove that if f is continuous at some point x0, then it is continuous at every point of R.





My Attempt:




Let c be an arbitrary real number.



First suppose that x0=0. As f is continuous at the point 0, so given any real number ε>0 we can find a real number δ>0 such that
|f(x)|=|f(x)0|=|f(x)f(0)|<ε
for all xR for which
|x|=|x0|<δ.
Then

|f(x)f(c)|=|f(xc)|<ε
for all xR such that
|xc|<δ.
Thus it follows that f is continuous at every point cR.




Am I right?




Now let us suppose that x00. As f is continuous at x0, so, for every real number ε>0 we can find a real number δ>0 such that

|f(xx0)|=|f(x)f(x0)|<ε
for all real numbers x which satisfy
|xx0|<δ.



Now if we could show from here that f is continuous at 0, then as before we will have managed to show that f is continuous at every real number c.




What next? How to proceed from here to show that our function f is continuous at 0? Or, is there any other route?


Answer




You are almost there. Let |t0|=|t|<δ, where δ is the one you have in the second box. Then t+x0=xR, so |t|=|xx0|<δ.



Thus, |f(t)f(0)|=|f(t)|=|f(xx0)|=|f(x)f(x0)|<ϵ for |t|<δ.



So f is continuous at 0.


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