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A - Review of Set Theory PDF

The document reviews key concepts in set theory, including: 1) There are two methods for defining a set - listing elements (roster method) or describing a shared property. Sets are represented by capital letters and elements by lowercase. 2) A set is a subset of another if it contains the same elements, written as A ⊆ B. A proper subset contains some but not all elements, written as A ⊂ B. 3) Set operations like union (A ∪ B), intersection (A ∩ B), complement (A), and difference (B − A) are defined along with properties like disjointness.

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591 views3 pages

A - Review of Set Theory PDF

The document reviews key concepts in set theory, including: 1) There are two methods for defining a set - listing elements (roster method) or describing a shared property. Sets are represented by capital letters and elements by lowercase. 2) A set is a subset of another if it contains the same elements, written as A ⊆ B. A proper subset contains some but not all elements, written as A ⊂ B. 3) Set operations like union (A ∪ B), intersection (A ∩ B), complement (A), and difference (B − A) are defined along with properties like disjointness.

Uploaded by

rrameshsmit
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Review of Set Theory

The purpose for reviewing set theory is to provide a mathematical structure for organizing methods of counting and grouping objects. Set theory may be used to dene the probabilities of possible outcomes of experiments. There are two common methods for dening a set. The rst method, known as the roster method, is to list the elements of a set. Synonyms for sets include class, aggregate, and collection. We will denote sets by capital letters, A, B, C, and so forth. The elements of a set will be indicated by lowercase letters, such as a, b, c, and so forth. If a is an element (or object, or member, or point) of A, then we denote this as a A. If a is not an element of A, the notation is a A. A second way of dening a set is called the property method, which describes some property held by all elements of the set but not held by objects that do not belong to the set. DEFINITION A.1: A set A is said to be a subset of another set, B, if all elements of A are also in B, in which case we write A B. With this denition, it is possible that the two sets are equal (i.e., they have all the same elements), in which case A B and at the same time B A. If on the other hand, A is a subset of B and there are some elements of B that are not in A, then we say that A is a proper subset of B and we write A B. DEFINITION A.2: The universal set, S, is the set of all objects under consideration in a given problem, while the empty set, , is the set that contains no elements. DEFINITION A.3: The complement of a set A, written A, is the set of all elements in S that are not in A. For two sets A and B that satisfy A B, the difference set, written B A, is the set of elements in B that are not in A. Note that for any set A, A S and A A. Also, if A B and B C, then A C. Finally, we also note the relationship S = . 487

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Appendix A

S A A AB A+B B AB B AB A+B
Figure A.1 A Venn diagram illustrating some of the concepts of sets.

DEFINITION A.4: For any two sets A and B the union of the two sets, A B, is the set of all elements that are contained in either A or B, and the intersection of the two sets, AB, is the set of all elements that are contained in both A and B. In the algebra of sets, the union operation plays the role of addition and so sometimes the notation A + B is used, while the intersection operation plays the role of multiplication and hence the alternative notations A B or AB are common. Some of the concepts just presented are illustrated using a Venn Diagram in Figure A.1. The set A is contained within the thick solid line; the set B is within the dashed line; the set A + B is the set of points inside either line, and the set AB is the set of points inside both. The set A AB is the set of points inside the solid line but not inside the dashed line, while the set B AB is the set of points inside the dashed line but not inside the solid line. The set A + B is the set of all points outside of both lines. DEFINITION A.5: Two sets A and B are said to be mutually exclusive, or disjoint, if and only if they have no common elements, in which case A B = . A collection of sets A1 , A2 , . . . , An are said to be exhaustive if each element in the universal set is contained in at least one of the sets in the collection. For exhaustive sets, A1 A2 An = S. The following laws are consequences of the denitions we have just introduced. The reader should verify these laws to gain familiarity with the algebra of sets.

Idempotent: A A = A, A A = A for all sets A. Commutative: A B = B A, A B = B A for all sets A and B. Associative: A(BC) = (AB)C = ABC, A(BC) = (AB)C = ABC for all sets A, B, and C. Distributive: A (B C) = (A B) (A C), A (B C) = (A B) (A C) for all sets A, B, and C.

Review of Set Theory

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Consistency: The three conditions A B, A B = A, and A B = B are all consistent or mutually equivalent. Universal bounds: A S for all sets A. Product: A = , S A = A for all sets A. Sum: A = A, S A = S for all sets A. Involution: (A) = A for all sets A. Complementarity: A A = S, A A = for all sets A. DeMorgans rst law: A B = A B for all sets A and B. DeMorgans second law: A B = A B for all sets A and B.

DeMorgans laws can be stated as follows: To nd the complement of an expression, replace each set by its complement and interchange additions with multiplications and multiplications with additions.

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