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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.
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.
An attempt to define the cardinality of a set as the equivalence class of all sets equinumerous to it is problematic in Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, the standard form of axiomatic set theory, because the equivalence class of any non-empty set would be too large to be a set: it would be a proper class.
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 ...
Cardinal functions are widely used in topology as a tool for describing various topological properties. [2] [3] Below are some examples.(Note: some authors, arguing that "there are no finite cardinal numbers in general topology", [4] prefer to define the cardinal functions listed below so that they never taken on finite cardinal numbers as values; this requires modifying some of the ...
The cardinality of the natural numbers is ℵ 0 (read aleph-nought, aleph-zero, or aleph-null), the next larger cardinality of a well-ordered set is aleph-one ℵ 1, then ℵ 2 and so on. Continuing in this manner, it is possible to define a cardinal number ℵ α for every ordinal number α, as described below.
The von Neumann cardinal assignment is a cardinal assignment that uses ordinal numbers.For a well-orderable set U, we define its cardinal number to be the smallest ordinal number equinumerous to U, using the von Neumann definition of an ordinal number.
Every infinite set which can be enumerated by natural numbers is the same size (cardinality) as N, and is said to be countable. Examples of countably infinite sets are the natural numbers, the even numbers, the prime numbers, and also all the rational numbers, i.e., the fractions.