Let
be points on the real line, the distance between them is 
If
and
are points in the plane, the Euclidean distance between them is 
1. Definitions
A metric or distance function on a set
is an assignmen, to each pair of point
, of a non-negative real number
, such that for all
we have
a)
if 
b) 
c) 
A set
on which a distance function is defined is called a metric space. The basic metric space will be the set of real numbers, to be denoted from now on by
, and Euclidean p-space
, the set of all p-tuples
of real numbers. The metric on
is given by

When
, we have
, and
.
On any metric space there is a natural notion of convergence: If
is a sequence of point in
, we say that the sequence coverges to
if
as 
The distance function and the convergence concept allow us to study the structure of various sets in a metric space.
For example, in
the set of points whose distance from the origin is less than
is the interior of the circle of radius
and center at
. In general, an open ball in a metric space
is a set of the form

The set-theoretic notation is standard,
is the set of points
in
whose distance from
is less than
. A closed ball is a set of the form

Let
be a subset of the metric space
,
is said to be an open set if for every
there is an open ball
that is entirely contained in
, that is 
For example, in
,
is the interior of an infinite rectangular strip and is therefore open. Intuitively, an open set is one that does not contain any of its boundary points.
Consider
:
is not open because an open ball in
with center at
cannot lie entirely with
.
However, that
is open, because in
an open ball is just an open interval: 
If
is a sequence of points in
and
, must also be in
. If
is a subset of the metric space
,
is said to be closed if whenever
is a sequence of points in
converging to the point
, we must have 
Let
be closed balls and the closed rectangular boxes
. In
, the interval
is not closed because the sequence of numbers
converges to
, which is outside the interval.
Theorem: A set
is open if and only if its complement
is closed.



