Discrete metric and topology

Metric space definition

Let $X$ be a set. The discrete metric, or trivial metric is the metric defined as follows:

• $$d:X\times X\rightarrow \mathbb{R}_{\ge 0}$$ with $$d:(x,y)\mapsto\left\{\begin{array}{lr}0 & \text{if }x=y \\1 & \text{otherwise}\end{array}\right.$$

However any strictly positive value will do for the $x\ne y$ case. For example we could define $d$ as:

• $$d:(x,y)\mapsto\left\{\begin{array}{lr}0 & \text{if }x=y \\v & \text{otherwise}\end{array}\right.$$
  • Where $v$ is some arbitrary member of $\mathbb{R}_{> 0}$ - traditionally (as mentioned) $v=1$ is used.
    

Note: however in proofs we shall always use the case $v=1$ for simplicity