Empty Set

In mathematics, and more specifically set theory, the empty set is the unique set having no elements; its size or cardinality (count of elements in a set) is zero. Some axiomatic set theories assure that the empty set exists by including an axiom of empty set; in other theories, its existence can be deduced. Many possible properties of sets are trivially true for the empty set.

Null set was once a common synonym for "empty set", but is now a technical term in measure theory.

Read more about Empty Set:  Notation, Properties

Famous quotes containing the words empty and/or set:

    When a poor disconsolated drooping creature is terrified from all enjoyment,—prays without ceasing ‘till his imagination is heated,—fasts and mortifies and mopes, till his body is in as bad a plight as his mind; is it a wonder, that the mechanical disturbances ... of an empty belly, interpreted by an empty head, should be mistook for [the] workings [of God].
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
    And after in life’s vase
    Of glass set while I might survive,
    But by a kind hand brought
    Alive
    To a strange place.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)