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A bijective function, f: X → Y, from set X to set Y demonstrates that the sets have the same cardinality, in this case equal to the cardinal number 4. Aleph-null, the smallest infinite cardinal. In mathematics, a cardinal number, or cardinal for short, is what is commonly called the number of elements of a set.
When two sets, and , have the same cardinality, it is usually written as | | = | |; however, if referring to the cardinal number of an individual set , it is simply denoted | |, with a vertical bar on each side; [3] this is the same notation as absolute value, and the meaning depends on context.
The definition of implies (in ZF, Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory without the axiom of choice) that no cardinal number is between and . If the axiom of choice is used, it can be further proved that the class of cardinal numbers is totally ordered , and thus ℵ 1 {\displaystyle \aleph _{1}} is the second-smallest infinite cardinal number.
The cardinality of the continuum is the size of the set of real numbers. The continuum hypothesis is sometimes stated by saying that no cardinality lies between that of the continuum and that of the natural numbers , ℵ 0 {\displaystyle \aleph _{0}} , or alternatively, that c = ℵ 1 {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {c}}=\aleph _{1}} .
The category < of sets of cardinality less than and all functions between them is closed under colimits of cardinality less than . κ {\displaystyle \kappa } is a regular ordinal (see below). Crudely speaking, this means that a regular cardinal is one that cannot be broken down into a small number of smaller parts.
The oldest definition of the cardinality of a set X (implicit in Cantor and explicit in Frege and Principia Mathematica) is as the set of all sets that are equinumerous with X: this does not work in ZFC or other related systems of axiomatic set theory because this collection is too large to be a set, but it does work in type theory and in New ...
2. An inductive definition is a definition that specifies how to construct members of a set based on members already known to be in the set, often used for defining recursively defined sequences, functions, and structures. 3. A poset is called inductive if every non-empty ordered subset has an upper bound infinity axiom See Axiom of infinity.
Also, is the smallest uncountable ordinal (to see that it exists, consider the set of equivalence classes of well-orderings of the natural numbers; each such well-ordering defines a countable ordinal, and is the order type of that set), is the smallest ordinal whose cardinality is greater than , and so on, and is the limit of for natural ...