Set Operations

Chapter 2

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 Cartesian

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 Example

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 Equality

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 Definitions

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More Definitions

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 Example

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 Venn Diagrams

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 Venn Diagrams Examples

What about intersection?

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 Venn Diagrams Examples

What about complement?

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 Venn Diagrams Examples

What about set difference?

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 Venn Diagrams Examples

What about symmetric difference?

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 Venn Diagrams Examples

Can you express symmetric difference using only union, intersection, and complement?

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 Set Identities
Identity Name

A   A Identity Laws
A U  A

Domination Laws
A   
A U  U

Idempotent Laws
A A  A
A A  A

( A)  A Complement Laws

A B  B  A Commutative Laws
A B  B  A

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 some more …
Identity Name

A  ( B  C )  ( A  B)  C Associative laws
A  ( B  C )  ( A  B)  C

A  ( B  C )  ( A  B)  ( A  C ) Distributive laws
A  ( B  C )  ( A  B)  ( A  C )

A B  A B DeMorgan’s laws
A B  A B

A  ( A  B)  A Absorption laws
A  ( A  B)  A

A A U Complement laws
A A 

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 How to prove set identities?

• Several methods:
– Use basic definition of sets, and apply logic

– Use existing set identities

– Use set table membership

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Example with definitions and logic

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 continued…

• We will use “universal generalization”

– We will perform our proof of P(x) using an
“arbitrary” x
– Since we did not assume anything specific about x,
we can then conclude that
• x P(x)

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 𝑥 ∈𝐴∪𝐵 Def. of complement
≡ 𝑥 ∉ (𝐴 ∪ 𝐵) Def. of ∉
≡ ¬ 𝑥 ∈ (𝐴 ∪ 𝐵) Def. of union
≡¬ 𝑥 ∈𝐴∨𝑥 ∈𝐵 DeMorgan’s Laws
≡ ¬(𝑥 ∈ 𝐴) ∧ ¬(𝑥 ∈ 𝐵) Def. of ∉
≡𝑥 ∉𝐴∧𝑥 ∉𝐵 Def. of complement
≡ 𝑥 ∈ 𝐴ҧ ∧ 𝑥 ∈ 𝐵ത Def. of intersection
≡ 𝑥 ∈ (𝐴ҧ ∩ 𝐵)
ത

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 Example using set identities
Show that A – B = A   A  B 

A  A  B De Morgan’s laws
= A  ( A  B) Distributive Rule
= ( A  A )  ( A  B) Complement Law
=   ( A  B) Identity Law
= ( A  B) Definition of difference
= A B

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 Membership Table

A B A B A B A B AB
1 1 1 0 0 0 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 0
0 1 1 1 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 1 1 1

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 Computer Representation

• Assume that the universal set U is finite

and a reasonable size n.
• Order the set.
• Represent a subset A of U to be the bit
string of length n which has a 1 in the ith
position if the ith element in the ordering
is in set A and a 0 otherwise.

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 Example

• U = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10} be ordered in the

usual fashion.
• The set S = {1,5,8}
• Has the representation
1000100100

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Union and Intersection of Indexed Collections

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