On /r/math, someone asked about the motivation for the axioms of a topology. They are a bit mysterious. But this comment (https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1km22kg/comment/ms72zz2/ ) was super insightful!
The idea is to capture notions of "closeness" and to be able to define continuous functions in a way that's 100% compatible with our usual real analysis definition of continuous function.
There's the classic "inverse of an open set is always open" definition, but that's equivalent to this one, which I think is far more intuitive, and also brings in our idea of closeness. From the comment:
Say that \(x\) "touches" a set \(A\) if \(x\) is in the closure of \(A\).
A continuous function is one for which, for any point \(x\) and set \(A\), if \(x\) touches \(A\), then \(f(x)\) touches \(f(A)\).
This is equivalent to the above inverse function definition; it avoids using the inverse function, and directly addresses our intuition: for continuous functions, two points in the domain that are close to each other are close in the codomain. Moving a tiny bit in the domain moves a tiny bit in the image.
Next step: invent time machine, go back to undergrad @ddrake studying topology, and tell him about this.
#math #topology