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It is the algebra of the set-theoretic operations of union, intersection and complementation, and the relations of equality and inclusion. For a basic introduction to sets see the article on sets, for a fuller account see naive set theory, and for a full rigorous axiomatic treatment see axiomatic set theory.
For example, the union of three sets A, B, and C contains all elements of A, all elements of B, and all elements of C, and nothing else. Thus, x is an element of A ∪ B ∪ C if and only if x is in at least one of A, B, and C. A finite union is the union of a finite number of sets; the phrase does not imply that the union set is a finite set ...
So the intersection of the empty family should be the universal set (the identity element for the operation of intersection), [4] but in standard set theory, the universal set does not exist. However, when restricted to the context of subsets of a given fixed set X {\displaystyle X} , the notion of the intersection of an empty collection of ...
This article lists mathematical properties and laws of sets, involving the set-theoretic operations of union, intersection, and complementation and the relations of set equality and set inclusion. It also provides systematic procedures for evaluating expressions, and performing calculations, involving these operations and relations.
The intersection of A and B is the set of all objects which are both in A and in B. It is denoted by A ∩ B . Finally, the relative complement of B relative to A , also known as the set theoretic difference of A and B , is the set of all objects that belong to A but not to B .
That set union and intersection are indeed distributive in the above sense is an elementary fact. The other direction is less trivial, in that it requires the representation theorems stated below. The important insight from this characterization is that the identities (equations) that hold in all distributive lattices are exactly the ones that ...
The union and intersection operations, in a family of sets that is closed under these operations, automatically form a distributive lattice, and Birkhoff's representation theorem states that every finite distributive lattice can be formed in this way. It is named after Garrett Birkhoff, who published a proof of it in 1937. [1]
Since relations are sets, they can be manipulated using set operations, including union, intersection, and complementation, and satisfying the laws of an algebra of sets. Beyond that, operations like the converse of a relation and the composition of relations are available, satisfying the laws of a calculus of relations , for which there are ...