I think I remember reading somewhere that the Baire Category Theorem is supposedly quite powerful. Whether that is true or not, it's my favourite theorem (so far) and I'd love to see some applications that confirm its neatness and/or power.
Here's the theorem (with proof) and two applications:
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I actually have no idea what ergodic theory is good for. The proof of the ergodic theorem and the fact that ergodic measures are extermal were both fun but I'm not sure what people really care about it for
How to Find analytic $f(z)$ such that
$$ f\left(\sqrt[3]{1 - z^3}\,\right)^2 = 1 - f(z)^2 $$
Koenigs function can not be used here So I am stuck.
How does the riemann surface look like ?
Among the interesting applications of BCT are the fact that complete metric spaces without isolated points must be uncountable, the fact that a function between complete metric spaces is continuous on a $G_\delta$ subset if you're looking for cool stuff that follows from BCT
Also a couple of "small lemmas" in functional analysis such as Banach-Steinhaus and the open mapping theorem if you're looking for "more serious" applications
What I've seen as equivalent definitions of nowhere dense is that the closure has empty interior, and that there is no open set in which the set is dense
Oh regarding BCT there was one problem I had in my analysis final first quarter that involved BCT which I didn't get, I just mumbled something about S-W and was so salty when I realized
@TedShifrin Basically the proof I have in mind reduces to showing that $\bigcup_{q\in\Bbb Q}C+q$, where $C$ is the usual Cantor set doesn't cover the whole of $\Bbb R$, this can be shown with a few basic facts about the Lebesgue measure instead of invoking the BCT
If $P$ is an infinitely differentiable function such that for each $x$, there is an $n$ with $P^{(n)}(x)=0$, then $P$ is a polynomial. (Note $n$ depends on $x$.) See the discussion in Math Overflow.