Introduction to Set Theory

Interactive Lesson by Thomas Cordell

Glossary

Here is the glossary of key terms and symbol meanings for this Lesson:

Important Key Terms

Sets: a collection of elements.

Elements: a number or object

Subsets: a set that is contained inside another set.

Intersection: is the set that contain all elements of both sets being compared.

Union: the convergence of two sets into a distinct single set.

Symmetric Difference: set of elements which are in one of the sets but not the other.

Cartesian Product: the set that contains all pairs between two sets.

Power Set: set that contains all subsets of a set.

Cardinality: the number of elements in a set.

 

Important Key Symbols

Î : means “in”.

Ï : means “NOT in”.

      : means all Natural numbers.

| : means “such that”.

< : Less than

> : Greater than

£ : Less than or equal to.

³ : Greater than or equal to.

     : means NOT equal to

Í : means subset

Ç : means the intersection

È : means the union

\ : means the difference

x : means the Cartesian Product

P() : means the Power set

| set | : means the cardinality of the set

Ø : empty set