Fitting new guests into a full infinite hotel
Question
A hotel has countably many rooms numbered , 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 to , freeing room 1. (b) Move each guest from room to , freeing all odd rooms for the newcomers. (c) Move current guests to ; then place passenger of coach in room (or use any bijection ), which is odd and never repeats by unique factorisation.
Adapted from OpenQuant; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.
See the hint and the full worked solution in the question bank (free account).
Open the worked solution