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The Cartesian product of an infinite number of sets, each containing at least two elements, is either empty or infinite; if the axiom of choice holds, then it is infinite. If an infinite set is a well-ordered set, then it must have a nonempty, nontrivial subset that has no greatest element. In ZF, a set is infinite if and only if the power set ...
Informally, a finite set is a set which one could in principle count and finish counting. For example, is a finite set with five elements. The number of elements of a finite set is a natural number (possibly zero) and is called the cardinality (or the cardinal number) of the set. A set that is not a finite set is called an infinite set.
In mathematics, a set is a collection of different [1] things; [2][3][4] these things are called elements or members of the set and are typically mathematical objects of any kind: numbers, symbols, points in space, lines, other geometrical shapes, variables, or even other sets. [5] A set may have a finite number of elements or be an infinite set.
Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory — as a branch of mathematics — is mostly concerned with those that are relevant to mathematics as a whole. The modern study of set theory was ...
Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects, such as {blue, white, red} or the (infinite) set of all prime numbers. Partially ordered sets and sets with other relations have applications in several areas. In discrete mathematics, countable sets (including finite sets) are the main focus
History. A crude sense of cardinality, an awareness that groups of things or events compare with other groups by containing more, fewer, or the same number of instances, is observed in a variety of present-day animal species, suggesting an origin millions of years ago. [4] Human expression of cardinality is seen as early as 40 000 years ago ...
This definition of "infinite set" should be compared with the usual definition: a set A is infinite when it cannot be put in bijection with a finite ordinal, namely a set of the form {0, 1, 2, ..., n−1} for some natural number n – an infinite set is one that is literally "not finite", in the sense of bijection.
An infinite set can simply be defined as one having the same size as at least one of its proper parts; this notion of infinity is called Dedekind infinite. The diagram to the right gives an example: viewing lines as infinite sets of points, the left half of the lower blue line can be mapped in a one-to-one manner (green correspondences) to the ...