Introduction

Set Theory
Why Study Set Theory?
Understanding set theory helps people to

• begin to understand logic

• organize things into groups
•see things in terms of systems
Key Mathematicians in
set theory and logic

• Georg Cantor
• John Venn
• George Boole
• Augustus DeMorgan
 Georg Cantor 1845 -1918

German mathematician who

invented set theory

proved that real numbers

are more numerous than
Cantor's theorem states generally that, for
natural numbers
any set A, the power set of A (i.e. the set of
all subsets of A) has a strictly greater
cardinality than A itself.

His main legacy, though, is as perhaps

the first mathematician to really
understand the meaning of infinity and
to give it mathematical precision.
John Venn 1834-1923
- British Mathematician
- priest (1859)
-Books:
The Logic of Chance (1866),
Symbolic Logic’ (1881) and
The Principles of Empirical Logic (1889). 
• studied and taught logic and probability theory
• Venn Diagrams (1881)
 George Boole 1815-1864
- British mathematician ,
- self- taught
- featured the operators
and, or, not, nor (exclusive or)
His legacy was Boolean logic, a theory of
mathematics in which all variables are
either "true" or "false", or "on" or "off". The
theory preceded the digital age, with
American Claude Shannon applying
Boolean logic to build the electrical circuits
in the 1930s that led to modern computers.
Augustus De Morgan 1806-1871

• British mathematician
• De Morgan’s laws
• formally stated the
laws of set theory
•Introduced the term
mathematical induction
Sets
•Definition of a Set
•Methods of naming a set
•Properties
•Relationships between two sets
•Operation on Sets
•Venn Diagram
Solve the problem using a Venn Diagram
1. A history teacher was interested to know about her class
of 42 students who keeps up with current events. She
gathered the following data:
9 students read the newspaper,
18 students listen to the radio,
30 students watch television,
3 students both read newspaper and listen to the radio,
12 students both listen to the radio and watch television,
6 students both read the newspaper and watch television,
and 2 students read the newspaper, listen to the radio and
watch television.
Organize the data using the Venn Diagram.
2. Mrs. Cruz asked her 30 students who among their mother,
father, or sibling will attend the quarterly conference. Sixteen
students said their mother will attend, another 16 said their
fathers will attend, and 11 said their siblings will attend. Five said
their mothers and siblings will attend, and of these, 3 said their
fathers will also attend. Five said only their siblings will attend
and 8 said only their fathers will attend. How many students said
only their mothers will attend? Support your answer by
illustrating the Venn Diagram which presents the given data.
Relation
- a correspondence between two things or quantities
- a set of ordered pairs such that the set of all first coordinates
of the ordered pairs is called Domain and the set of all the
second coordinates of the ordered pairs is called Range.
- maybe expressed as a statement, arrow diagram, table,
equation, set-builder notation and graph.
Example: R= {(1, 2), (2, 4), (3, 6), (4, 8), (5, 10)}
Types of relations
1. one - to – one relation
2. one – to – many relation
3. many – to – one relation
Equivalence relation
Let 𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧 be elements of A. A relation on a set A is said to
be an equivalence relation if it has the following properties
i. Reflexive : 𝑥~𝑥 for every 𝑥 element of A
ii. Symmetric : If 𝑥~𝑦 , then y~𝑥.
iii. Transitive : If 𝑥~𝑦 & y~𝑧 , then 𝑥~𝑧.
Show that R = {(1,1), (1,3), (2,2), (3,1, (3,3)) is an
equivalence relation from a set A = {1, 2, 3}.
Relations in Language of Math
Grammatical rules for the use of symbols :
To use < in a sentence, one should precede it by a noun and
follow it by a noun.
• Other examples of relations are “equals” and “ is an
element of”
• It is important (when specifying a relation) to be careful
about which objects are to be related.
Function
- a relation such that each element of the domain is paired
with exactly one element of the range.

To denote this relationship, we use the functional notation:

where indicates that a function exists between variables
and .
A- domain B - range
Function
evaluating a function
Inverse of a function
What is wrong with this?
1. 5 is a subset of N
2. x > 2 or x <1 is equivalent to 2<x<1
3. Given the function x +10, find the value of f(4)
4.
5. 22/7 = 3.14
Binary Operations
A binary operation on a set A is a function that takes pairs of
elements of A and produces elements of A from them. We use the
symbol * to denote arbitrary binary operation on a se
Four Properties: For every x,y,z element of A
1. Commutative x* y = y *x
2. Associative x* (y*z) = (x*y)* z
3. Identity e*x = x *e
4. Inverse x*y = y*x = e
Elementary Logic
•Logical connectives
•Quantifiers
•Negation
Logical connectives
- the mathematical equivalent of a conjunction
- examples : and
or
implies
Implication “p implies q”
Means :
• if p then q
• q if p
• p only if q
• whenever p is true, q is true
• q is necessary for p
• p is sufficient for q
Quantifiers
“all”, “some”, “any”, “every”, nothing”
Examples (see p. 7):
“Nothing is better than lifelong happiness.”
“Everybody likes at least one drink and that drink is water.”