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Fitting new guests into a full infinite hotel

Question

A hotel has countably many rooms numbered 1,2,3,…1,2,3,\dots, and every room is occupied. Explain how to make space in each case:

(a) one extra guest arrives;

(b) a countably infinite line of new guests arrives;

(c) countably many coaches arrive, each with countably many passengers.

Short answer

(a) Move each guest from room nn to n+1n+1, freeing room 1. (b) Move each guest from room nn to 2n2n, freeing all odd rooms for the newcomers. (c) Move current guests to 2n2n; then place passenger jj of coach ii in room 3i5j3^{i}5^{j} (or use any bijection N×N→N\mathbb N\times\mathbb N\to\mathbb N), which is odd and never repeats by unique factorisation.

Adapted from OpenQuant; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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