Finding the Power Set of a Power Set

Date: 02/17/2005 at 04:45:48

From: Richard
Subject: "The second power set", or the power set of a power set
What is "the second power set", or the power set of the power set of
a set, say set <1,2,3>?
As we know, the power set of set <1,2,3> is
<< >,<1>,<2>,<3>,<1,2>,<1,3>,<2,3>,<1,2,3>>.
But I do not know the power set of that set.

Date: 02/22/2005 at 09:47:35

From: Doctor Ian
Subject: Re:
Hi Richard,
Suppose our original set is
A = {a,b}
The power set of this is the set of all subsets:
P(A) = { {},
{a}, {b},
{a,b}
}

No elements
One element
Two elements

To make subsequent expansion less of a notational nightmare, I'm

going
to use variables to represent these subsets, i.e.,
P(A) = { W, X, Y, Z }
Now we can take the power set of the power set, which is the set of
all subsets of P(A):
P(P(A)) = { {},
{W},
{X},
{Y},
{Z},
{W,X},
{W,Y},
{W,Z},
{X,Y},
{X,Z},
{Y,Z},
{W,X,Y},
{W,X,Z},
{W,Y,Z},
{X,Y,Z},
{W,X,Y,Z}
}

No elements
One element

Two elements

Three elements

Four elements

This is 2^4 = 16 elements, as we would expect. To express them in

terms of the original elements, we can substitute as needed:
W
X
Y
Z

->
->
->
->

{}
{a}
{b}
{a,b}

P(P(A)) = { {},
{{}},
{{a}},
{{b}},
{{a,b}},
{{},{a}},
{{},{b}},
{{},{a,b}},
{{a},{b}},
{{a},{a,b}},
{{b},{a,b}},
{{},{a},{b}},
{{},{a},{a,b}},
{{},{b},{a,b}},
{{a},{b},{a,b}},
{{},{a},{b},{a,b}}
}
If I wanted to find P(P(P(A))), I would use the same trick again,
i.e., assign a variable to each element of P(P(A)), expand using
those
variables, and substitute. Otherwise, it's too easy to get lost in a
blizzard of brackets.
Does this help?