In: Advanced Math
Let S ⊆ R be a nonempty compact set and p ∈ R. Prove that there exists a point x_0 ∈ S which is “closest” to p. That is, prove that there exists x0 ∈ S such that |x_0 − p| is minimal.
Consider the function defined by . We claim that this is continuous. Let be arbitrary; then for any we claim that
Notice that if we prove this claim then will be proven to be (uniformly) continuous in , by -definition of continuity.
Now, by triangle inequality we have
and similarly,
This shows that
which proves
Now, because is continuous on compact set , it attains a minimum in . Thus, there is such that
This completes the proof.