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.