Distinct - in Mathematics - Proving Distinctness

Proving Distinctness

In order to prove that two things x and y are distinct, it often helps to find some property that one has but not the other. For a simple example, if for some reason we had any doubt that the roots 1 and 2 in the above example were distinct, then we might prove this by noting that 1 is an odd number while 2 is even. This would prove that 1 and 2 are distinct.

Along the same lines, one can prove that x and y are distinct by finding some function f and proving that f(x) and f(y) are distinct. This may seem like a simple idea, and it is, but many deep results in mathematics concern when you can prove distinctness by particular methods. For example,

• The Hahn–Banach theorem says (among other things) that distinct elements of a Banach space can be proved to be distinct using only linear functionals.
• In category theory, if f is a functor between categories C and D, then f always maps isomorphic objects to isomorphic objects. Thus, one way to show two objects of C are distinct (up to isomorphism) is to show that their images under f are distinct (i.e. not isomorphic).