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Set theory was developed by mathematicians to be able to talk about collections of objects. It has
turned out to be an invaluable tool for defining some of the more complicated mathematical structures. As
such, we will be making use of some very basic set theory, mostly as a convenient notation for some of our
constructions. If you have seen this material before, feel free to ignore this handout. If you have further
questions about this material, I would be happy to provide further explanation or examples.
1 Sets
A set is just a collection of mathematical objects. These objects can be numbers, vectors, spaces, or even
other sets.
2 Elements
The objects in these collections are called elements. Given a set S and an object x, we use the notation
x S to denote that x is an element of S, and x 6 S to denote that x is not an element of S. When x S,
we say that x is an element of S or that S contains x.
3 Defining Sets
We have three basic ways of writing down a set. We can list all of the elements, write down some defining
property for its elements, or write its elements as the values taken by some expression.
{(x, y) R2 : x = y}
1
3.3 Elements of a Given Form
Suppose that we want to express the set of all even numbers. That is the set of all integers n so that n is
equal to 2m for some other integer m. We could of course write this as
On the other hand, this notation is somewhat cumbersome. It is often useful to have a way to write the set
of all objects that can be produced in some way. Thus, for the set of even integers we use the alternative
notation:
{2m : m Z}.
In general we use the notation
{f (x, y, z) : x S, y T, z R}
to denote the set of all things that can be written as f (x, y, z) for some elements x, y, z of the sets S, T, R,
respectively. So for example,
{n2 + m2 : n, m Z}
is the set of all numbers that can be written as the sum of the squares of two integers, and
{{n, x} : n Z, x R}
is the set of sets that contain as elements one integer and one real number.
5 Operations
Another important way to create sets is to define them in terms of simpler sets. Here are a few simple
operations that can be used to do this.
Given two sets S and T the union, denoted S T is the set of all elements contained in either set. Namely,
S T = {x : (x S) or (x T )}.
Given two sets S and T the intersection, denoted S T is the set of all elements contained in both sets.
Namely,
S T = {x : (x S) and (x T )}.
The difference of S and T , denoted S\T is the set of elements that are in S but not T . Namely
2
6 Functions
One final piece of notation well be making use of is that of functions. A function is a rule for assigning to
each element x in a set S, another element f (x) in some other set T . This f would be a function taking
elements of S to elements of T denoted f : S T . In this case, S is called the domain of f and T is called
the codomain.
The function f is called surjective or onto if every element of the codomain can be written as some value
of f . Or in other words if for every y T there exists an x S so that f (x) = y.
The function f is called injective or one-to-one if distinct elements of the domain get mapped to distinct
elements of the codomain. In other words, f is injective when f (x) = f (y) only when x = y.
If f is both injective and surjective, it is bijective. This means that for each element of T that there is
one and only one element of S that f maps to it. In other words, f is bijective if for every y T there is a
unique x S so that f (x) = y.