15 Cardinality
15 Cardinality
Sid Chaudhuri
Recap: Left and Right Inverses
● A function is injective (one-to-one) if it has a left
inverse
– g : B → A is a left inverse of f : A → B if
g ( f (a) ) = a for all a ∈ A
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs2800/2015sp/handouts/jonpak_function_notes.pdf
Bijection and two-sided inverse
● A function f is bijective if it has a two-sided
inverse
● Proof (⇒): If it is bijective, it has a left inverse
(since injective) and a right inverse (since
surjective), which must be one and the same by
the previous factoid
● Proof (⇐): If it has a two-sided inverse, it is both
injective (since there is a left inverse) and
surjective (since there is a right inverse). Hence it
is bijective.
Inverse of a function
● The inverse of a bijective function f : A → B is the
unique function f ‑1: B → A such that for any
a ∈ A, f ‑1(f(a)) = a and for any b ∈ B, f(f ‑1(b)) = b
● A function is bijective if it has an inverse function
f(a)
a f ‑1(a) b = f(a)
f
A B
f ‑1
Following Ernie Croot's slides
Inverse of a function
● If f is not a bijection, it cannot have an inverse
function
f
x x
1 1 ?
y y
2 2
z z
3 3
w w
f
1 1 x
x
2 2
y y
3 3
z ? z
4 4
x 1
y 2
z 3
0 1 2 3 4 ...
2 4 6 8 10 ...
x1 0.000000000…
x2 0.103040501…
x3 0.987654321…
x4 0.012121212…
x5 ⁞
Cardinality and Bijections
● The natural numbers and real numbers do not
have the same cardinality
Consider the number
x1 0.000000000… y = 0 . b1 b2 b3...
0,1 1,1
0 1
0,0 1,0
Comparing Cardinalities
● Definition: If there is an injective function from
set A to set B, we say |A| ≤ |B|
2 4 6 8 ...
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ...
|Evens| ≤ |N|