Countability

Shivam Dubey
Ph.D.(Mathematics)
Department of Applied Science
IIIT ALLAHABAD
Email: rss2022509@iiit.ac.in
September 2, 2022

1 ABSTRACT
In this presentation , we discuss about the countability nature of union of
countable sets,finite product of countable sets, infinite product of countable
sets and we will also discuss about the countability of set of all finite subsets
of natural numbers.

2 Introduction
Before Cantor’s revolutionary observation, mathematicians thought that only
one kind of infinity, but Cantor told that there are two kind of infinity. The
cardinality of set of natural numbers N is less than the cardinality of set
of real numbers R ı.e. set of real numbers cannot be put in to one-one
correspondence with the set of natural numbers. Based on this observation
he gave the theory of Countability.
Remark 1. throughout this presentation we use word countable for a set S
if either it is finite or countably infinite.
Definition 2.1 (Countablity). A set S is countable if either it is finite(including
empty set) ı.e., S has finite number of elements or if it is infinite then there
exists a bijective map f from S to the set of natural numbers N .

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Theorem 2.1. A nonempty set S is countable iff there exists a injective
map f from S to N ı.e.,

f :S→N
Proof. suppose S is countable then two cases arise either S is countably
infinite or it is finite.
if S is countably infinite then there exists a bijection f from N to S then
obviously it is also injective.
if S is finite and it has n elements

(a1 , a2 , ...an )

then we can construct a injection f as follows,

f : S → (1, 2, 3...n)

f (ai ) = i
for i ≤ n
Conversely, if there is a injective map f from S to N ,
if S is finite then nothing to prove.
if S is infinite set then,
f : S → f (S)
is a bijection.
Remark 2. A subset of Countable set is Countable.
so again S is countable.

Example 2.1. N × N is countable.

let us defined a function,
f :N ×N →N
f (m, n) = 2m 3n
where (m, n) ∈ N × N
clearly f is an injection as, f (m, n) = f (r, s)

↔ 2m 3n = 2r 3s
↔ 2m−r = 3s−n

2
 ↔m−r =s−n=0
as right hand side is even number for (m − r) > 0 & left hand side is odd
number for (s − n) > 0

↔ m = r&n = s
↔ (m, n) = (r, s).

Theorem 2.2. Countable union of countable set is countable.

Proof. Let (S1 , S2 , ...Sn ....) is countable family of countable sets, and let
∞
[
S= Sn
n=1

be their union.Here without loss of generality we can assume that each Si′ s
are disjoint, also each Si are countable so we can enumerate the elements of
each Si .
S1 = (s11 , s12 , .....s1n ......)
S2 = (s21 , s22 , .....s2n ......)
.
.
.
Sn = (sn1 , sn2 , .....snn ......)
.
.
then we can defined an injection
∞
[
f: Sn → N × N
n=1
as,
f (si,j = (i, j)

Theorem 2.3. Product of two countable set is countable.

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Proof. Let A and B be two countable sets, then there exists injective maps
f & g,
f :A→N
&
g:B→N
. let us defined a map h ,

h:A×B →N ×N

as,
h(a, b) = (f (a), g(b))
then, clearly it is an injective map.
Corollory 1. finite product of countable sets is countable (can be proved
by mathematical induction)
Theorem 2.4. Countable product of countable sets need not be countable.
Proof. To prove this one example is sufficient. Let us take set of all sequence
on {0,1} ı.e., ∞
n=1 {0, 1}
Q

S = {f |f : N → {0, 1}}
we will prove set S is uncountable. if it is countable then ∃ a enumaration
of elements of S, as follows

fi = (ai1 , ai2 , ..., ain , ....)

∀i ∈ N
let us construct a sequence f ′ in {0,1} as follows.

f ′ = fi′

∀i ∈ N
such that fi′ = 0 if fii = 1 & fi′ = 1 if fii = 0.
clearly this,
f′ ∈/S
this shows that it is not possible to enumerate the elements of S.

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Remark 3. Countable product of countable set is countable iff each set is
singleton.

Lemma 1 (Countability). Suppose to each element of the set A there is

assigned by some definite rule a unique natural number n in such a way that
to each n ∈ N there correspond to at most a finite number of elements of
the set A, then A is countable.

Example 2.2. Set of all finite subset of N is countable.

let S={A|A ⊂ N such that A contains only finite number of elements }
we can create a binary string for each subset A ∈ S as,
{a1 , a2 , ........, an } where ai = 0 or 1 for ith position if i ∈ N & i ∈ A
this gives us a unique binary representation corresponding to each finite sub-
set and conversely corresponding to each finite subset we get a unique binary
representation containing finite 1′ s. now we can assign every finite subset of
N a unique number n equal to its cardinality and also corresponding to each
cardinality n we can assign only finite number of subsets of N as by above
binary representation contains only finite number of 1′ s in its representation,
so by cardinality lemma it is countable.

THANK YOU...