Extended Operations
Families of Sets
When dealing with sets whose elements are themselves sets it is
fairly common practice to refer to them as families of sets,
however this is not a definition.
A = {x : AF xA}= {x : A AF xA}.
AF
A = {a ,b ,c ,d } and A = {a}.
AF AF
Theorem 2.8
For each set B in a family F of sets,
a) AB
AF
b) B A.
AF
Pf: a) Suppose x A, then A F, x A. Since B F, we
have x B. Thus, A B.
A = {xU : A AF xA}= U .
AF
and
A = {xU : A AF x A} = .
AF
Indexing
Given a family of sets F, it is often convenient to associate to each
set in the family a "label" called an index, which need not be
related in any way to the elements of the set. The set of all indices,
often denoted by is called an indexing set.
A
A
a
= a
a
a
A
i=1
i
=
A
i=1
i = {1}
5
A
i=1
i = {1,2,3,4,5}
7
A
i=3
i = {1,2,3}
Pairwise Disjoint
Given a non-empty family of sets, there are two concepts of
disjointness that can be applied (this does not arise if there are
only two sets in the family).
A =
a
a