Least upper bound
Given a subset in some larger partially ordered set
, a least upper bound or supremum, for
is an element
such that
for every
and there is no
with this same property.
If the least upper bound of
is an element of
, it is also the maximum of
. If
, then
has no maximum.
Completeness: This is one of the fundamental axioms of real analysis.
A set is said to be complete if any nonempty subset of
that is bounded above has a supremum.
The fact that is complete is something intuitively clear but impossible to prove using only the field and order properties of
See also
This article is a stub. Help us out by expanding it.