Lecture 2, March 17, 2011

1 Cardinality
Consider any finite set A and let n be the number of elements in A. Then
we say that the size of the set is n and write this as

|A| = n (1.1)

Then any finite set B having n elements will have the same size as A and
we have |A| = |B|. But this can happen if and only if A is equivalent to B.
Thus we have

For any two finite sets A and B, |A| = |B| ⇐⇒ A ∼ B (1.2)

Further if a finite set A has more elements than a finite set B then we have
|B| < |A|. Clearly this happens if and only if B is equivalent to a subset of
A and A is not equivalent to any subset of B. Thus we have

For any two finite sets A and B

|B| < |A| ⇐⇒ B ∼ A1 ⊆ A and
A 6∼ any subset of B (1.3)

Moreover if a finite set A is equivalent to a subset B1 of B we can say that

A has at most as many elements as in B and so we can say the size of A is
smaller than or equal to that of B. Thus

For any two finite sets A and B, |A| ≤ |B| ⇐⇒ A ∼ B1 ⊆ B (1.4)

We shall now use these same ideas to compare the sizes of sets that are not
necessarily finite. We shall write |A| for the size of a set A. We have the
following definition
Definition 1.1 Let A and B be any two sets. We say
1. |A| ≤ |B| if A is equivalent to a subset B1 of B

2. |B| ≤ |A| if B is equivalent to a subset A1 of A

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 3. |A| = |B| if both (1) and (2) above hold, that is, if if A is equivalent to
a subset B1 of B and B is equivalent to a subset A1 of A, (which by
Schroeder-Bernstein’s theorem means A ∼ B)
Remark 1.1 If only (1) holds above and (2) does not hold then we say that
|A| < |B| and similarly if only (2) holds and (1) does not hold we say that
|B| < |A|. Thus we have the following:

Law of Trichotamy:
For any two sets A and B, exactly one of the following three must hold:
1. |A| < |B|

2. |B| < |A|

3. |A| = |B|
Any two sets which are equivalent are said to have the same “Cardinality”.
Every set A represents a cardinality which also is denoted by |A| and every
set equivalent to A has the same cardinality |A|.

2 Countably Infinite Sets

Consider the set N of natural numbers,
N = { 1, 2, 3, · · ·}
The size or“cardinality” of this set is denoted by ℵ0 . Any set which is quiv-
alent to N has cardinality ℵ0 and is said to be “countably infinite”. Thus
if A is countably infinite then there exists an isomorphism f ,
f : N −→ A
and therefore the elements of A can be arranged as a sequence
f (1), f (2), f (3), · · ·
We shall look at some important properties of countably infinite sets later.
We shall say that a set is “countable” if it is either a finite set or a countably
infinite set.

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3 The Power Set
Consider any finite set Ω. Then the set of all subsets of Ω is called the “Power
set of Ω” and is denoted by 2Ω . For any finite set Ω having N elements, it is
easy to see that 2Ω has 2N elements and hence we see that if the cardinality
of Ω is N then the cardinality of 2Ω is 2N and hence we get
 
|Ω| < 2Ω 

for finite sets Ω.

We shall now see that the above property is true for any set Ω - finite or
infinite.
Consider any set Ω and let 2Ω be its power set. Now we define

f : Ω −→ 2Ω

as

f (ω) = {ω} (3.1)

This means every element ω of Ω is mapped to the singleton subset {ω} of

Ω. It is easy to see that this is a one-one map from Ω to 2Ω and hence we
get
 
|Ω| ≤ 2Ω  (3.2)
 

Now suppose
 
|Ω| = 2Ω  (3.3)
 

Then this =⇒ there exists a map

g : 2Ω −→ Ω (3.4)

which is an isomorphism, and hence onto. Therefore for every subset of Ω

there must be a preimage under the map g, that is,

∀ A ∈ 2Ω ∃a ∈ Ω 3 g(a) = A (3.5)

Now consider the following subset of Ω:

K = {x ∈ Ω : x ∈
/ g(x)} (3.6)

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K consists of all those elements of Ω which do not belong to their corre-
sponding image set under the map g. Now Now by (3.5) there exists a k ∈ Ω
such that g(k) = K.
There arise two possibilities:

1. k ∈ g(k)

2. k ∈
/ g(k)

Now in Case (1) we get (by definition of the set K) that k ∈ / K that is
k∈/ g(k), (since g(k) = K), and this is a contradiction since we started with
k ∈ g(k).
Similarly in Case (2) we get k ∈ K (by definition of K) and hence k ∈ / g(k)
again a contradiction because we started with k ∈ g(k).
Thus
 in
 both
 cases we get a contradiction. Thus our starting asumption that
 Ω
Ω| = 2  is false. Hence we get


 
|Ω| 6= 2Ω  (3.7)
 

Combining (3.2) and (3.7) we get

 
|Ω| < 2Ω 

Thus we have

Theorem 3.1 For every set Ω

 
|Ω < 2Ω  (3.8)
 

4 The hierarchy of infinities

Consider the set N of natural numbers whose cardinality we denoted by ℵ0 .
Now the power set 2N of N has, by our theorem above, higher cardinality
than that of N. Hence we get

ℵ0 < 2N

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We denote by c the cardinality of 2N and thus

ℵ0 < 2ℵ0 = c (4.9)

The power set 2Ω where Ω = 2N has cardinality 2c which obviously is higher

than c and we can continue this argument ad infinitum and get a hierarchy
of infinities as
c 2c
ℵ0 < c < 2c < 22 < 22 < · · · (4.10)

This leads us then to the folowing question:

Does there exist a cardinality between ℵ0 and c, that is, does there exist a
set Ω such that

ℵ0 < |Ω| < c?

This means the set Ω must be such that N is equivalent to a subset of Ω but
not equivalent to Ω and Ω is equivalent to a subset of 2N but not equivalent
to 2N . That such a set does not exist is the so called Cantor’s Continuum
Hypothesis. (Cohen showed that this is indepenednt of the other axioms of
set theory)