Examples
Consider the divisors of some composite number, such as (in the figure) 120, partially ordered by divisibility. Any two divisors of 120, such as 12 and 20, have a unique greatest common factor 12 ∧ 20 = 4, the largest number that divides both of them, and a unique least common multiple 12 ∨ 20 = 60; both of these numbers are also divisors of 120. These two operations ∨ and ∧ satisfy the distributive law, in either of two equivalent forms: (x ∧ y) ∨ z = (x ∨ z) ∧ (y ∨ z) and (x ∨ y) ∧ z = (x ∧ z) ∨ (y ∧ z), for all x, y, and z. Therefore, the divisors form a finite distributive lattice.
One may associate each divisor with the set of prime powers that divide it: thus, 12 is associated with the set {2,3,4}, while 20 is associated with the set {2,4,5}. Then 12 ∧ 20 = 4 is associated with the set {2,3,4} ∩ {2,4,5} = {2,4}, while 12 ∨ 20 = 60 is associated with the set {2,3,4} ∪ {2,4,5} = {2,3,4,5}, so the join and meet operations of the lattice correspond to union and intersection of sets.
The prime powers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8 appearing as elements in these sets may themselves be partially ordered by divisibility; in this smaller partial order, 2 ≤ 4 ≤ 8 and there are no order relations between other pairs. The 16 sets that are associated with divisors of 120 are the lower sets of this smaller partial order, subsets of elements such that if x ≤ y and y belongs to the subset, then x must also belong to the subset. From any lower set L, one can recover the associated divisor by computing the least common multiple of the prime powers in L. Thus, the partial order on the five prime powers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8 carries enough information to recover the entire original 16-element divisibility lattice.
Birkhoff's theorem states that this relation between the operations ∧ and ∨ of the lattice of divisors and the operations ∩ and ∪ of the associated sets of prime powers is not coincidental, and not dependent on the specific properties of prime numbers and divisibility: the elements of any finite distributive lattice may be associated with lower sets of a partial order in the same way.
As another example, the application of Birkhoff's theorem to the family of subsets of an n-element set, partially ordered by inclusion, produces the free distributive lattice with n generators. The number of elements in this lattice is given by the Dedekind numbers.
Read more about this topic: Birkhoff's Representation Theorem
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