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Least upper bound

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Given a subset S in some larger partially ordered set R, a least upper bound or supremum, for S is an element M \in R such that s \leq M for every s \in S and there is no m < M with this same property.

If the least upper bound M of S is an element of S, it is also the maximum of S. If M \not\in S, then S has no maximum.


Completeness: This is one of the fundamental axioms of real analysis.

A set S is said to be complete if any nonempty subset of S that is bounded above has a supremum.

The fact that \mathbb{R} is complete is something intuitively clear but impossible to prove using only the field and order properties of \mathbb{R}

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