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Least But Not The Last (Posted on 2003-05-08) Difficulty: 4 of 5
Prove that every Non-Empty set of Positive Integers contains a "Least Element".

See The Solution Submitted by Ravi Raja    
Rating: 2.7500 (8 votes)

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Solution Proof by Contradiction | Comment 9 of 13 |
Let S denote a nonempty set of positive integers with no least element.

1 is not an element of this set, since there is no positive integer less than 1, and therefore it would be a least value.

Assume that all integers in the range [1, n] are not part of S. Then n+1 is not a member of S, because it would be a least element of S.

By induction, every positive integer is not a member of S. Since S consists only of positive integers, it is the empty set. However, it was given that S is not empty. Thus, by contradiction, every nonempty set of positive integers must have a least element.
  Posted by friedlinguini on 2003-05-11 07:03:35
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