
CHAPTER 2
Relations
The concept of a relation is fundamental in order to understand
a broad range of mathematical phenomena. In natural language,
relation is understood as correspondence, connection. We say that
two objects are related if there is a common property linking them.
Defi nition 2.0.1. Consider the sets A and B. We call (binary) relation
between the elements of A and B any subset R ¡ A B. An element a
¢ A is in relation R with an element b ¢ B if and only if (a, b) ¢ R. An
element (a, b) ¢ R will be denoted by aRb.
Definition 2.0.2. If A
1
,..., A
n
, n 2 are sets, we
call an n-ary relation any subset R ¡ A
1
A