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De Morgan

This document summarizes De Morgan's laws and duality as they relate to set theory. It defines basic set operations like union, intersection, complement and discusses De Morgan's laws which state that for any sets A and B, the complement of the intersection of A and B is the union of the complements, and the complement of the union of A and B is the intersection of the complements. It also discusses the concept of duality, where theorems about partially ordered sets remain true if all inequalities are reversed, such as replacing intersections with unions and vice versa.

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2K views5 pages

De Morgan

This document summarizes De Morgan's laws and duality as they relate to set theory. It defines basic set operations like union, intersection, complement and discusses De Morgan's laws which state that for any sets A and B, the complement of the intersection of A and B is the union of the complements, and the complement of the union of A and B is the intersection of the complements. It also discusses the concept of duality, where theorems about partially ordered sets remain true if all inequalities are reversed, such as replacing intersections with unions and vice versa.

Uploaded by

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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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DE MORGAN’S LAW AND DUALITY

SHYAMA

A BSTRACT. A briefing on de Morgan’s laws, duality and it’s applications. Set the-
ory, boolean and lattice algebra have varied applications, starting from digital
systems design, to logical reasoning to real analysis.

Sets are the most basic building blocks in mathematics, and it is in fact not
easy to give a precise definition of the mathematical object set. Once sets are
introduced, however, one can compare them, define operations similar to ad-
dition and multiplication on them, and use them to define new objects such as
various kinds of number systems. In fact, most of the topics in modern analysis
are ultimately based on sets.
Therefore, it is good to have a basic understanding of sets, and we will review
a few elementary facts in this section. Most, if not all, of this section should be
familiar and its main purpose is to define the basic notation so that there will be
no confusion in the remainder of this text.

1. S ET & OPERATIONS ON SET


Definition 1.1. Sets and Operations on Sets
A set is a collection of objects chosen from some universe. The universe is usually
understood from the context. Sets are denoted by capital, bold letters or curly
brackets.
• A ⊂ B: A is a subset of B means that every element in A is also contained
in B.
• A ∪ B: A union B is the set of all elements that are either in A or in B or in
both.
• A ∩ B: A intersection B is the set of all elements that are in both sets A
and B.
• A \ B: A minus B are all elements from A that are not in B.
• comp(A): The complement of A consists of all elements that are not in A.
• Two sets are disjoint if A ∩ B = 0 (the empty set).
• Two sets A and B are equal if A ⊂ B and B ⊂ A.
The most commonly used sets are the sets of natural numbers, integers, ra-
tional and real numbers, and the empty set. They are usually denoted by these
symbols:
• N = {1, 2, 3, 4, . . .} = natural numbers (sometimes 0 is considered part of
the natural numbers as well).
• Z = {. . . − 3, −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, 3, . . .} = integers.

Date: 30-Aug-2006.
1991 Mathematics Subject Classification. Set theory, lattice and boolean algebra.
Key words and phrases. Set, De Morgan’s law, Complement, intersection, union, dual.
1
2 SHYAMA

• Q = {p/q : p, q ∈ Z} (read as ”all number p / q, such that p and q are


elements of Z”) = rational numbers.
• R = real numbers.
• φ = empty set (the set that contains no elements).
All of the number systems (except the natural numbers) will be defined in a
mathematically precise way in later sections. First, some examples:
Example 1.2. -

• Define the following sets: E = {x : x = 2n, f orn ∈ N}, O = {x : x =


2n − 1, f orn ∈ N}, A = {x ∈ R : −4 < x < 3}, B = {x ∈ R : −1 < x < 7},
and I = {x ∈ R : x2 = −2}. Then:
(1) What, in words, are the sets E, O, and I?
(2) Find A ∪ B, A ∩ B, A \ B, comp(A).
(3) Find φ ∪ E, φ ∩ I, comp(I).
Sets can be combined using the above operations much like adding and mul-
tiplying numbers. Familiar laws such as associative, commutative, and distribu-
tive laws will be true for sets as well. As an example, the next result will illustrate
the distributive law; other laws are left as exercises.

2. D ISTRIBUTION , AND DE M ORGAN L AWS


Proposition 2.1. Distributive Law for Sets

(1) A ∪ (B ∩ C) = (A ∪ B) ∩ (A ∪ C)
(2) A ∩ (B ∪ C) = (A ∩ B) ∪ (A ∩ C)
Many results in set theory can be illustrated using Venn diagram, as in the
above proof. However, such diagrams do not represent mathematically rigorous
proofs. Nonetheless, before an actual proof is developed, it is first necessary to
form a mental picture of the assumptions, conclusions, and implications of a
theorem. For this process a Venn diagram can be very helpful. You can prac-
tice Venn diagrams by using them for some of the true/false statements in the
exercises.
There are many other theorems dealing with operation on sets. One that is
particularly interesting is the theorem about de Morgan’s Laws, because it deals
with any number of sets (even infinitely many). Drawing a Venn diagram in such
a situation would be impossible, but a mathematical proof can easily deal with
this situation:
Theorem 2.2. de Morgan’s Laws
T S
(1) comp( j Aj ) = j comp(Aj )
S T
(2) comp( j Aj ) = j comp(Aj )
In words of proposition logic - For every proposition involving logical addi-
tion and multiplication (”or” and ”and”), there is a corresponding proposition
in which the words ”addition” and ”multiplication” are interchanged.
Theorem 2.3. Duality
A metatheorem stating that every theorem on partially ordered sets remains true
DE MORGAN’S LAW AND DUALITY 3

if all inequalities are reversed. In this operation, supremum must be replaced


by infimum, maximum with minimum, and conversely. In a lattice, this means
that meet and join must be interchanged, and in a Boolean algebra, 1 and 0 must
be switched.
Each of de Morgan’s two laws can be derived from the other by duality.

R EFERENCES
I NDEX
Boolean algebra, 3

complement, 1

de Morgan’s Laws, 2
disjoint, 1
distributive law, 2
Duality, 2

empty set, 1, 2
equal, 1

infimum, 3
integers, 1
intersection, 1

join, 3

lattice, 3
logical addition, 2

maximum, 3
meet, 3
minimum, 3
minus, 1
multiplication, 2

natural numbers, 1

proposition, 2
proposition logic, 2

rational, 1, 2
real numbers, 1, 2

subset, 1
supremum, 3

union, 1

Venn diagram, 2

4
DE MORGAN’S LAW AND DUALITY 5

5/A, C HATTERJEE L ANE , S ERAMPORE , H OOGHLY , WB, 712201, I NDIA


E-mail address: [email protected]

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