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In mathematics, the empty set or void set is the unique set having no elements; its size or cardinality (count of elements in a set) is zero. [1] Some axiomatic set theories ensure that the empty set exists by including an axiom of empty set , while in other theories, its existence can be deduced.
It is a useful concept in analysis, indicating lack of an element where one might be expected. It is usually written with the symbol "∅", in Unicode U+2205 ∅ EMPTY SET (∅, ∅, ∅, ∅). A common ad hoc solution is to use the Scandinavian capital letter Ø instead. There are several kinds of zero:
Note that a null set is not necessarily an empty set. Common notations for the empty set include "{}", "∅", and "". The latter two symbols were introduced by the Bourbaki group (specifically André Weil) in 1939, inspired by the letter Ø in the Danish and Norwegian alphabets (and not related in any way to the Greek letter Φ). [2] Empty sets ...
Furthermore, one sometimes considers set theories in which there are no infinite sets, and then the axiom of empty set may still be required. However, any axiom of set theory or logic that implies the existence of any set will imply the existence of the empty set, if one has the axiom schema of separation. This is true, since the empty set is a ...
The only subsets of X that are both open and closed (clopen sets) are X and the empty set. The only subsets of X with empty boundary are X and the empty set. X cannot be written as the union of two nonempty separated sets. The only continuous functions from X to {0,1}, the two-point space endowed with the discrete topology, are constant.
In constructive mathematics, "not empty" and "inhabited" are not equivalent: every inhabited set is not empty but the converse is not always guaranteed; that is, in constructive mathematics, a set that is not empty (where by definition, "is empty" means that the statement () is true) might not have an inhabitant (which is an such that ).
A partition of a set X is a set of non-empty subsets of X such that every element x in X is in exactly one of these subsets [2] (i.e., the subsets are nonempty mutually disjoint sets). Equivalently, a family of sets P is a partition of X if and only if all of the following conditions hold: [ 3 ]
Zero is the count of no objects; in more formal terms, it is the number of objects in the empty set. The concept of parity is used for making groups of two objects. If the objects in a set can be marked off into groups of two, with none left over, then the number of objects is even. If an object is left over, then the number of objects is odd.