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There are two ways to define the "cardinality of a set": The cardinality of a set A is defined as its equivalence class under equinumerosity. A representative set is designated for each equivalence class. The most common choice is the initial ordinal in that class. This is usually taken as the definition of cardinal number in axiomatic set theory.
The cardinality of any infinite ordinal number is an aleph number. Every aleph is the cardinality of some ordinal. The least of these is its initial ordinal. Any set whose cardinality is an aleph is equinumerous with an ordinal and is thus well-orderable. Each finite set is well-orderable, but does not have an aleph as its cardinality.
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.
Within data modelling, cardinality is the numerical relationship between rows of one table and rows in another. Common cardinalities include one-to-one , one-to-many , and many-to-many . Cardinality can be used to define data models as well as analyze entities within datasets.
The notion of cardinality, as now understood, was formulated by Georg Cantor, the originator of set theory, in 1874–1884. Cardinality can be used to compare an aspect of finite sets. For example, the sets {1,2,3} and {4,5,6} are not equal, but have the same cardinality, namely three.
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 most frequently used cardinal function is the function that assigns to a set A its cardinality, denoted by |A|. Aleph numbers and beth numbers can both be seen as cardinal functions defined on ordinal numbers. Cardinal arithmetic operations are examples of functions from cardinal numbers (or pairs of them) to cardinal numbers.
In set theory, the concept of cardinality is significantly developable without recourse to actually defining cardinal numbers as objects in the theory itself (this is in fact a viewpoint taken by Frege; Frege cardinals are basically equivalence classes on the entire universe of sets, by equinumerosity).