Definition
A set is a well defined collection of objects. Georg Cantor, the founder of set theory, gave the following definition of a set at the beginning of his Beiträge zur Begründung der transfiniten Mengenlehre:
A set is a gathering together into a whole of definite, distinct objects of our perception and of our thought – which are called elements of the set.The elements or members of a set can be anything: numbers, people, letters of the alphabet, other sets, and so on. Sets are conventionally denoted with capital letters. Sets A and B are equal if and only if they have precisely the same elements.
As discussed below, the definition given above turned out to be inadequate for formal mathematics; instead, the notion of a "set" is taken as an undefined primitive in axiomatic set theory, and its properties are defined by the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms. The most basic properties are that a set "has" elements, and that two sets are equal (one and the same) if and only if every element of one is an element of the other.
Read more about this topic: Set (mathematics)
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
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—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
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