Some background reading

As is inevitably the case, the mathematics we employ during this course will use some basic mathematical concepts (from analysis and metric spaces and their topology, mainly) that not all students are equally aware of or comfortable with. While I will do my very best to keep the course as self-contained as possible, and will always aim to emphasize examples that illustrate any abstract facts, students may benefit from some a compact background reference as the one given in Appendix A of [HK]. It can be found also at blackboard, for your convenience.

The most important notions are metric, open and closed sets, the existence of limits, and the contraction principle (Banach fixed point or contraction mapping theorem). While the course (and exam) are of course not about these abstract notions and objects in principle, of course we need some of such to be able to make statements and prove them.