Chapter 2

SET THEORY

2.1 DEFINITIONS

The following phrases are familiar to us:

  1. The set of reserved words in a programming language.
  2. The set of integers.
  3. The set of natural numbers.
  4. The domain of a predicate parameter is the set of values that can be assigned to it.
  5. The set of students who failed the discrete structures final.

A set is formally defined to be a collection of distinct elements.

The set of suits in a card deck is {spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs}, {red, blue, green} is a set of primary colours and {violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red} is the set of colours in a rainbow.

The term multiset denotes a collection of elements. The only difference between the notion of a set and that of a multiset is that a multiset is permitted ...

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