What is a set? Well, simply put, it's a collection.

First we specify a common property among "things" (this word will be defined
later) and then we gather up all the "things" that have this common property.

For example, the items you wear: shoes, socks, hat, shirt, pants, and so on.
I'm sure you could come up with at least a hundred.
This is known as a set.

Or another example is types of fingers.

This set includes index, middle, ring, and pinky.

So it is just things grouped together with a certain property in common.

Notation
There is a fairly simple notation for sets. We simply list each element (or
"member") separated by a comma, and then put some curly brackets around
the whole thing:

The curly brackets

{ } are sometimes called "set brackets" or "braces".

This is the notation for the two previous examples:

{socks, shoes, watches, shirts, ...}
{index, middle, ring, pinky}
Notice how the first example has the "..." (three dots together).

The three dots

... are called an ellipsis, and mean "continue on".

So that means the first example continues on ... for infinity.

(OK, there isn't really an infinite amount of things you could wear, but I'm not
entirely sure about that! After an hour of thinking of different things, I'm still
not sure. So let's just say it is infinite for this example.)
So:

The first set {socks, shoes, watches, shirts, ...} we call an infinite
set,

the second set {index, middle, ring, pinky} we call a finite set.

But sometimes the "..." can be used in the middle to save writing long lists:
Example: the set of letters:
{a, b, c, ..., x, y, z}

In this case it is a finite set (there are only 26 letters, right?)

Numerical Sets
So what does this have to do with mathematics? When we define a set, all we
have to specify is a common characteristic. Who says we can't do so with
numbers?
Set of even numbers: {..., -4, -2, 0, 2, 4, ...}
Set of odd numbers: {..., -3, -1, 1, 3, ...}
Set of prime numbers: {2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, ...}
Positive multiples of 3 that are less than 10: {3, 6, 9}
And the list goes on. We can come up with all different types of sets.
There can also be sets of numbers that have no common property, they are
just defined that way. For example:
{2, 3, 6, 828, 3839, 8827}
{4, 5, 6, 10, 21}
{2, 949, 48282, 42882959, 119484203}
Are all sets that I just randomly banged on my keyboard to produce.

Why are Sets Important?

Sets are the fundamental property of mathematics. Now as a word of warning,
sets, by themselves, seem pretty pointless. But it's only when we apply sets in
different situations do they become the powerful building block of mathematics
that they are.
Math can get amazingly complicated quite fast. Graph Theory, Abstract
Algebra, Real Analysis, Complex Analysis, Linear Algebra, Number
Theory, and the list goes on. But there is one thing that all of these share
in common: Sets.

Universal Set
At the start we used the word "things" in quotes. We call this
the universal set. It's a set that contains everything. Well,
not exactly everything. Everything that is relevant to our
question.
Then our sets included integers. The universal set for that would
be all the integers. In fact, when doing Number Theory, this is
almost always what the universal set is, as Number Theory is
simply the study of integers.
However in Calculus (also known as real analysis), the universal
set is almost always the real numbers. And in complex analysis,
you guessed it, the universal set is the complex numbers.

Some More Notation

When talking about sets, it is fairly standard to use Capital Letters to represent
the set, and lowercase letters to represent an element in that set.
So for example, A is a set, and a is an element in A. Same with B and b, and C
and c.
Now you don't have to listen to the standard, you can use something like m to
represent a set without breaking any mathematical laws (watch out, you can
get years in math jail for dividing by 0), but this notation is pretty nice and
easy to follow, so why not?
Also, when we say an element a is in a set A, we use the symbol
And if something is not in a set use .
Example: Set A is {1,2,3}. We can see that 1

Equality

A, but 5

to show it.

Two sets are equal if they have precisely the same members. Now, at first
glance they may not seem equal, so we may have to examine them closely!
Example: Are A and B equal where:

A is the set whose members are the first four positive whole numbers

B = {4, 2, 1, 3}

Let's check. They both contain 1. They both contain 2. And 3, And 4. And we
have checked every element of both sets, so: Yes, they are equal!
And the equals sign (=) is used to show equality, so we write:

A=B

Subsets
When we define a set, if we take pieces of that set, we can form what is called
a subset.
So for example, we have the set {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}. A subset of this is {1, 2, 3}.
Another subset is {3, 4} or even another, {1}. However, {1, 6} is not a subset,
since it contains an element (6) which is not in the parent set. In general:

A is a subset of B if and only if every element of A is in B.

So let's use this definition in some examples.

Is A a subset of B, where A = {1, 3, 4} and B = {1, 4, 3, 2}?

1 is in A, and 1 is in B as well. So far so good.
3 is in A and 3 is also in B.
4 is in A, and 4 is in B.

That's all the elements of A, and every single one is in B, so we're done.

Yes, A is a subset of B
Note that 2 is in B, but 2 is not in A. But remember, that doesn't matter, we only
look at the elements in A.
Let's try a harder example.

Example: Let A be all multiples of 4 and B be all multiples of 2. Is A

a subset of B? And is B a subset of A?
Well, we can't check every element in these sets, because they have an infinite
number of elements. So we need to get an idea of what the elements look like
in each, and then compare them.
The sets are:

A = {..., -8, -4, 0, 4, 8, ...}

B = {..., -8, -6, -4, -2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, ...}

By pairing off members of the two sets, we can see that every member of A is
also a member of B, but every member of B is not a member of A:

So:

A is a subset of B, but B is not a subset of A

Proper Subsets
If we look at the defintion of subsets and let our mind wander a bit, we come to
a weird conclusion.
Let A be a set. Is every element in A an element in A? (Yes, I wrote that
correctly.)
Well, umm, yes of course, right?
So doesn't that mean that A is a subset of A?
This doesn't seem very proper, does it? We want our subsets to be proper. So
we introduce (what else but) proper subsets.
A is a proper subset of B if and only if every element in A is also in B, and there
exists at least one element in B that is not in A.
This little piece at the end is only there to make sure that A is not a proper
subset of itself. Otherwise, a proper subset is exactly the same as a normal
subset.

Example:
{1, 2, 3} is a subset of {1, 2, 3}, but is not a proper subset of {1, 2, 3}.

Example:
{1, 2, 3} is a proper subset of {1, 2, 3, 4} because the element 4 is not in
the first set.
Notice that if A is a proper subset of B, then it is also a subset of B.

Even More Notation

When we say that A is a subset of B, we write A

B.

Or we can say that A is not a subset of B by A

B ("A is not a subset of B")

When we talk about proper subsets, we take out the line underneath and so it
becomes A

B or if we want to say the opposite, A

B.

Empty (or Null) Set

This is probably the weirdest thing about sets.

As an example, think of the set of piano keys on a guitar.

"But wait!" you say, "There are no piano keys on a guitar!"
And right you are. It is a set with no elements.
This is known as the Empty Set (or Null Set).There aren't any elements in it.
Not one. Zero.
It is represented by
Or by {} (a set with no elements)
Some other examples of the empty set are the set of countries south of the
south pole.
So what's so weird about the empty set? Well, that part comes next.

Empty Set and Subsets

So let's go back to our definition of subsets. We have a set A. We won't define it
any more than that, it could be any set. Is the empty set a subset of A?
Going back to our definition of subsets, if every element in the empty set is
also in A, then the empty set is a subset of A. But what if we
have no elements?
It takes an introduction to logic to understand this, but this statement is one
that is "vacuously" or "trivially" true.
A good way to think about it is: we can't find any elements in the empty set
that aren't in A, so it must be that all elements in the empty set are in A.
So the answer to the posed question is a resounding yes.

The empty set is a subset of every set, including the empty set itself.

Order
No, not the order of the elements. In sets it does not matter what order the
elements are in.
Example: {1,2,3,4} is the same set as {3,1,4,2}
When we say "order" in sets we mean the size of the set.
Just as there are finite and infinite sets, each has finite and infinite order.
For finite sets, we represent the order by a number, the number of elements.
Example, {10, 20, 30, 40} has an order of 4.

For infinite sets, all we can say is that the order is infinite. Oddly enough, we
can say with sets that some infinities are larger than others, but this is a more
advanced topic in sets.

A set is a well defined collection of distinct objects. The objects that make up a set (also known as
the elements or members of a set) can be anything: numbers, people, letters of the alphabet, other
sets, and so on. Georg Cantor, the founder of set theory, gave the following definition of a set at the
beginning of his Beitrge zur Begrndung der transfiniten Mengenlehre:[1]
A set is a gathering together into a whole of definite, distinct objects of our perception [Anschauung]
or of our thoughtwhich are called elements of the set.
Sets are conventionally denoted with capital letters. Sets A and B are equal if and only if they have
precisely the same elements.[2]
Cantor's definition 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 ZermeloFraenkel 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 each set is an element of the other.

Describing sets[edit]
Main article: Set notation
There are two ways of describing, or specifying the members of, a set. One way is by intensional
definition, using a rule or semantic description:
A is the set whose members are the first four positive integers.
B is the set of colors of the French flag.
The second way is by extension that is, listing each member of the set. An extensional
definition is denoted by enclosing the list of members in curly brackets:
C = {4, 2, 1, 3}
D = {blue, white, red}.
One often has the choice of specifying a set either intensionally or extensionally. In
the examples above, for instance, A = C and B = D.
There are two important points to note about sets. First, a set can have two or more members
which are identical, for example, {11, 6, 6}. However, we say that two sets which differ only in that
one has duplicate members are in fact exactly identical (see Axiom of extensionality). Hence, the

set {11, 6, 6} is exactly identical to the set {11, 6}. The second important point is that the order in
which the elements of a set are listed is irrelevant (unlike for a sequence or tuple). We can
illustrate these two important points with an example:
{6, 11} = {11, 6} = {11, 6, 6, 11} .
For sets with many elements, the enumeration of members can be abbreviated.
For instance, the set of the first thousand positive integers may be specified
extensionally as
{1, 2, 3, ..., 1000},
where the ellipsis ("...") indicates that the list continues in the obvious way.
Ellipses may also be used where sets have infinitely many members. Thus
the set of positive even numbers can be written as {2, 4, 6, 8, ... }.
The notation with braces may also be used in an intensional specification of
a set. In this usage, the braces have the meaning "the set of all ...". So, E =
{playing card suits} is the set whose four members are , , , and . A
more general form of this is set-builder notation, through which, for
instance, the set F of the twenty smallest integers that are four less
than perfect squares can be denoted
F = {n2 4 : n is an integer; and 0 n 19}.
In this notation, the colon (":") means "such that", and the description
can be interpreted as "F is the set of all numbers of the form n2 4,
such that n is a whole number in the range from 0 to 19 inclusive."
Sometimes the vertical bar ("|") is used instead of the colon.

Membership[edit]
Main article: Element (mathematics)
If B is a set and x is one of the objects of B, this is denoted x B, and is read as "x belongs to
B", or "x is an element of B". If y is not a member of B then this is written as y B, and is read
as "y does not belong to B".
For example, with respect to the sets A = {1,2,3,4}, B = {blue, white,
red}, and F = {n2 4 : n is an integer; and 0 n 19} defined above,
4 A and 12 F; but
9 F and green B.

Subsets[edit]
Main article: Subset

If every member of set A is also a member of set B, then A is said to be a subset of B,

written A B (also pronounced A is contained in B). Equivalently, we can write B A, read as B
is a superset of A, B includes A, or B contains A. The relationship between sets established by
is called inclusion or containment.
If A is a subset of, but not equal to, B, then A is called a proper subset of B, written A B (A is a
proper subset of B) or B A (B is a proper superset of A).
Note that the expressions A B and B A are used differently by different authors; some
authors use them to mean the same as A B (respectively B A), whereas others use them to
mean the same as A B (respectively B A).

A is a subset of B

Example:

The set of all men is a proper subset of the set of all people.

{1, 3} {1, 2, 3, 4}.

{1, 2, 3, 4} {1, 2, 3, 4}.

The empty set is a subset of every set and every set is a subset of itself:

A.

A A.

An obvious but useful identity, which can often be used to show that two seemingly different
sets are equal:

A = B if and only if A B and B A.

A partition of a set S is a set of nonempty subsets of S such that every element x in S is in

exactly one of these subsets.

Power sets[edit]

Main article: Power set

The power set of a set S is the set of all subsets of S. Note that the power set contains S itself
and the empty set because these are both subsets of S. For example, the power set of the set
{1, 2, 3} is {{1, 2, 3}, {1, 2}, {1, 3}, {2, 3}, {1}, {2}, {3}, }. The power set of a set S is usually
written as P(S).
The power set of a finite set with n elements has 2n elements. This relationship is one of the
reasons for the terminology power set[citation needed]. For example, the set {1, 2, 3} contains three
elements, and the power set shown above contains 23 = 8 elements.
The power set of an infinite (either countable or uncountable) set is always uncountable.
Moreover, the power set of a set is always strictly "bigger" than the original set in the sense
that there is no way to pair every element of S with exactly one element of P(S). (There is
never an onto map or surjection from S onto P(S).)
Every partition of a set S is a subset of the powerset of S.