Sets
Writing A = {1, 2, 3, 4 } means that the elements of the set A are the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. Sets of elements of A, for example {1, 2}, are subsets of A.
Sets can themselves be elements. For example consider the set B = {1, 2, {3, 4}}. The elements of B are not 1, 2, 3, and 4. Rather, there are only three elements of B, namely the numbers 1 and 2, and the set {3, 4}.
The elements of a set can be anything. For example, C = { red, green, blue }, is the set whose elements are the colors red, green and blue.
Read more about this topic: Element (mathematics)
Famous quotes containing the word sets:
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91)
“Certain anthropologists hold that man, having discovered tools, ceased to evolve biologically. Animals, never having discovered them, continue to fashion drills out of their beaks, oars out of their hind feet, wings out of their forefeet, suits of armor out of their hides, levers out of their horns, saws out of their teeth. Whether this be true or not, all authorities agree that man is the tool-using animal. It sets him off from the rest of the animal kingdom as drastically as does speech.”
—Stuart Chase (1888–1985)