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Much more significant is Cantor's discovery of an argument that is applicable to any set, and shows that the theorem holds for infinite sets also. As a consequence, the cardinality of the real numbers, which is the same as that of the power set of the integers, is strictly larger than the cardinality of the integers; see Cardinality of the ...
The power set of the set of natural numbers can be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the set of real numbers (see Cardinality of the continuum). The power set of a set S, together with the operations of union, intersection and complement, is a Σ-algebra over S and can be viewed as the prototypical example of a Boolean algebra.
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 .
A generalized form of the diagonal argument was used by Cantor to prove Cantor's theorem: for every set S, the power set of S—that is, the set of all subsets of S (here written as P(S))—cannot be in bijection with S itself. This proof proceeds as follows: Let f be any function from S to P(S). It suffices to prove f cannot be surjective.
Although E is a proper subset of N, both sets have the same cardinality. N does not have the same cardinality as its power set P(N): For every function f from N to P(N), the set T = {n∈N: n∉f(n)} disagrees with every set in the range of f, hence f cannot be surjective.
Assuming the existence of an infinite set N consisting of all natural numbers and assuming the existence of the power set of any given set allows the definition of a sequence N, P(N), P(P(N)), P(P(P(N))), … of infinite sets where each set is the power set of the set preceding it. By Cantor's theorem, the cardinality of each set in this ...
where A and B are two finite sets and |S| indicates the cardinality of a set S (which may be considered as the number of elements of the set, if the set is finite). The formula expresses the fact that the sum of the sizes of the two sets may be too large since some elements may be counted twice.
The empty set is also occasionally called the null set, [11] though this name is ambiguous and can lead to several interpretations. The power set of a set A, denoted (), is the set whose members are all of the possible subsets of A. For example, the power set of {1, 2} is { {}, {1}, {2}, {1, 2} }.