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A set of polygons in an Euler diagram This set equals the one depicted above since both have the very same elements.. In mathematics, a set is a collection of different [1] things; [2] [3] [4] these things are called elements or members of the set and are typically mathematical objects of any kind: numbers, symbols, points in space, lines, other geometrical shapes, variables, or even other ...
These sets have in common the cardinal number |N| = (aleph-nought), a number greater than every natural number. Cardinal numbers can be defined as follows. Define two sets to have the same size by: there exists a bijection between the two sets (a one-to-one correspondence between the elements).
In Zermelo–Fraenkel (ZF) set theory, the natural numbers are defined recursively by letting 0 = {} be the empty set and n + 1 (the successor function) = n ∪ {n} for each n. In this way n = {0, 1, …, n − 1} for each natural number n. This definition has the property that n is a set with n elements.
The first ordinal number that is not a natural number is expressed as ω; this is also the ordinal number of the set of natural numbers itself. The least ordinal of cardinality ℵ 0 (that is, the initial ordinal of ℵ 0) is ω but many well-ordered sets with cardinal number ℵ 0 have an ordinal number greater than ω.
Sets and proper classes. These include Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory, which has the same strength as ZFC for theorems about sets alone, and Morse–Kelley set theory and Tarski–Grothendieck set theory, both of which are stronger than ZFC.
An infinite set may have the same cardinality as a proper subset of itself, as the depicted bijection f(x)=2x from the natural to the even numbers demonstrates. Nevertheless, infinite sets of different cardinalities exist, as Cantor's diagonal argument shows.
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.
Sets are uniquely characterized by their elements; this means that two sets that have precisely the same elements are equal (they are the same set). [42] In a formalized set theory, this is usually defined by an axiom called the Axiom of extensionality. [43] For example, using set builder notation,