Dumb question but why is ‘[‘ called ‘closed’ and ‘)’ called ‘open’? I somehow would have thought the reverse.
Imagine a series of adjacent boxes with shared walls, that you cut up. Depending on how you cut them up, each wall will stay with one of the boxes, which thus will remain “closed” on that side, while the other box who shared the same wall is now open on the side where you separated the boxes.
+———+———+
| | |
+———+———+
|
V
+———+ ———+
| | |
+———+ ———+
closed open
[0,1] (1,2]In an (imprecise) way, the closed set is a water balloon and the open set doesn't have the rubber balloon wrapping the water - I would consider the water balloon to be 'closed' in this case.