CSS 31012 - Mathematics for

Computing

SET THEORY

NM FASMIE
Contents
• Introduction to Set
• Empty set, Unit set, Membership, Subset, Cardinality, Power set, Special sets
• Venn Diagram
• Union, Intersection, Disjoint sets, Cardinality of Union and Intersection,
Difference of sets, Cartesian product, Partition of a set
• Set Identities
• Set Equality
• Proving Set Equality

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Introduction to Set
• A set is a collection of abstract objects.
• Typically a set is determined by its distinct elements (i.e. members) where the
order does not matter though the repetition is not interested.
• Eg:

• There are two common ways to specify a set.

• Implicit: Describe using predicates . Preferred for infinite sets.

• Explicit: Enumerate the members

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Empty set, Unit set, & Membership
• Empty set
• An empty set is a set that contains no elements and denoted as or .
• Note: denotes the empty set while denotes a set containing one element - .
• Unit set / Singleton
• A set containing only one element is called a unit set or singleton.
• Eg:
• Membership
• iff is an element (member) of .
• Eg:
• then,

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Subset
• Definition:
• A set is a subset of a set , denoted by , iff every element of is also an element of .
Formally written as follow

• Note:
• : is a subset of Note:
• The null set (i.e. empty set - ) and
• : is a subset of , possibly equal to
set itself are called trivial subsets.
• : is not a subset of
• If but and , then is a proper
subset of .
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Cardinality & Power set
• Cardinality – Definition:
• The cardinality of a set is the number of distinct elements of .
• Eg:

• Power set – Definition:

• The power set of a set is the set of all subsets of :

• If then, contains subsets (i.e. ) where denotes the number of

elements in .
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Special sets
• : The set of natural numbers (or non-negative
integers)
• : The set of integers .
• : The set of rational numbers (terminating or
repeating decimal such as or ).
• : The set of irrational numbers (non-terminating and
non-repeating decimal such as ).
• : The set of real numbers (or the set of numbers
written with a decimal point such as ).

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Example – 1
• Problem:
• Prove that the sets and satisfy .

• Solution:
• An arbitrary element of is of the form for some . An arbitrary
element of is of the form for some . Clearly, for the integer . Since an
arbitrary element of is an element of , we conclude .

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Example – 2
• Problem:
• Let . Is ?

• Solution:
To show that , we must find a natural number such that

Since every element of has the form for some . To find out if there is such a , we simply
solve the equation for and see if the solution is an integer.

Since 6 is a natural number, we know .

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Venn Diagram
• Venn diagram is used to visualize the possible relations
among a collection of sets.
• Union
𝐴𝐵
𝐴𝐵
• The union of the sets and is the set of those elements
that are either in or in , or in both.

• Intersection
• The intersection of the sets and is the set of all
elements that are in both and .

• Disjoint sets
𝐴
• Sets and are disjoint iff (i.e. ). 𝐴∩ 𝐵=∅
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Cardinality of Union and Intersection

𝐴𝐵 𝐴𝐵 𝐵 𝐵
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Difference of sets
• Definition: The difference of the sets and ,
𝐴−𝐵𝐵
also called complement of with respect to

𝐵−𝐴
is the set containing elements that are in A
but not in .

Note:

• The complement of is the complement of

with respect to the universe .
𝐴 12
Cartesian product
• Definition: The Cartesian product of the sets and is the set of all
ordered pairs , where and .

• Eg: Let , . Then,

Note:
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Partition of a set
• Definition: A collection of nonempty sets is a partition of a set iff

• and are mutually disjoint: .

• Eg: Consider , and . Then, and form a partition of .

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 Set Identities
(De Morgan’s Law)

De Morgan’s Law,

𝐴−𝐵𝐵
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Set Identities
Identity And Form OR Form
Identity Law
Null (or Dominance) Law
Idempotent Law
Inverse Law
Commutative Law
Associative Law
Distributive Law
Absorption Law
DeMorgan’s Law
Double Negation Law
Alternative representation
for set difference
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Set Equality
• Two sets are equal iff they contain exactly the same elements.
• i.e. iff and .

• There are three methods to prove set equality:

• Show that each set is a subset of the other.
• Apply set identities.
• Use membership table.

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Proving Set Equality – Each others’ subset
Show that

For any , or (or both).

when

when

Therefore, 18
Proving Set Equality – Each others’ subset
For any , and .
when and

when and

Therefore,

With and , we can conclude that . 19

 Proving Set Equality – Set identities
Show that

(By alternative representation for set difference)

(By De Morgan’s law)

(By Distributive law)

(By Associative law)

(By Idempotent law)

(By Absorption law)

(By alternative representation for set difference)

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Proving Set Equality – Membership table
• Membership table is similar to the truth table.
• Columns represent the different set expressions while the rows represent all
combinations of memberships in constituent sets.
• i.e. “1” = membership and “0” = non-membership
• Two sets are equal iff they have identical columns.
• Prove that

0 0 0 0 0
0 1 1 0 0
1 0 1 1 1
1 1 1 0 0
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