Exercise 1.1

Is Z countable?

Solution:

Though there are "twice as many" positive and negative integers as there are only positive ones, we can make a one-to-one correspondence between Z and N. We can, in other words, assign a unique positive integer to each positive and negative integer.

How? Assign the positive integer 2n+1 to the positive integer n, and the integer 2n to the negative integer –n. The correspondence looks like this:

Sooner or later you get to every element of Z this way, though the elements of N grow faster than those of Z. The peculiar fact, but fact nevertheless is that it doesn't matter at all that the elements of N grow faster here.