The Mathematics of SET

Steven Klee
SIMUW 2010
klees@math.washington.edu

July 20, 2010

1 Introduction
SET is a fun and exciting card game that is full of rich mathematical structures. We will
explore some of these structures today. Let’s start with a description of the game itself.
SET is a card game with 81 cards in a deck. Each card has four features:

• A shape: oval, squiggle, or diamond

• A color : red, green, or purple

• A number of shapes: one, two or three

• A shading: empty, striped, or solid

The purpose of the game is to find sets of cards among a collection of cards that have
been laid out on the table. A set consists of three cards with the property that each
card’s features, considered one at a time, are either the same on each card or all different
on each card.

Exercise 1.1 Show that given two cards C1 and C2 , there is a unique card C3 such that
{C1 , C2 , C3 } is a set.

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Exercise 1.2 How many sets are there in the 81 card deck?

Exercise 1.3 Answer the following questions with your group.

1. Lay out 12 cards from the deck of cards at your table. How many sets are there
among those 12 cards? (Don’t remove or replace sets once you see them!) After
you have found all possible sets, record the number of sets, re-shuffle the deck, and
repeat this experiment five times.

2. Play two games of SET as a group. Each time, keep track of the number of cards
left on the table at the end of the game.

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Exercise 1.4 If you lay 12 cards on the table at random, what is the expected number of
sets among them?

Exercise 1.5 Show that if you play a game of SET, it is impossible to have three cards
left on the table at the end of the game. (Equivalently, if you take 26 sets during the
course of the game, the remaining three cards also form a set.)

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2 Time Out
2.1 Modular Arithmetic
Consider the set of numbers Zn = {0, 1, . . . , n − 1}. We define addition on Zn by defining
i ⊕ j to be the remainder of i + j upon division by n. Similarly, we define multiplication
on Zn by defining i ⊗ j to be the remainder of i × j upon division by n.

Exercise 2.1 Write out the addition and multiplication tables for Z2 , Z3 , and Z4 .

⊕ 0 1 ⊗ 0 1
0 0
1 1

⊕ 0 1 2 ⊗ 0 1 2
0 0
1 1
2 2

⊕ 0 1 2 3 ⊗ 0 1 2 3
0 0
1 1
2 2
3 3

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2.2 Geometry in the Integer Lattice
For a fixed integer d, let Zd = {(a1 , a2 , . . . , ad ) : ai ∈ Z}. We can think of each element
of Zd as a point in a d-dimensional world, and we can define a group structure on Zd by
component-wise addition:

(a1 , . . . , ad ) + (b1 , . . . , bd ) = (a1 + b1 , . . . , ad + bd ).

If a = (a1 , a2 , . . . , ad ) and b = (b1 , b2 , . . . , bd ) are points in Zd , the dot product of a

and b is
a · b = a1 b1 + a2 b2 + · · · + ad bd .

Exercise 2.2 Let a = (1, 2) ∈ Z2 and b = (2, 6, 4) ∈ Z3 .

1. What is {x ∈ Z2 : a · x = 0}?

2. What are the possible values of a · x as x ranges over Z2 ?

3. What is {x ∈ Z3 : b · x = 2}?

4. What are the possible values of b · x as x ranges over Z3 ?

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2.3 Finite Geometry and Modular Arithmetic
Let Zd3 be the group of points (a1 , a2 , . . . , ad ) where each xi ∈ Z3 , and addition is performed
component-wise in Z3 . If a and b are points in Zd3 , we can still take the dot product a · b
by
a · x = a1 ⊗ x 1 ⊕ a2 ⊗ x 2 ⊕ · · · ⊕ ad ⊗ x d .

Exercise 2.3 Perform the following computations in Z43 .

1. (1, 2, 1, 0) + (2, 2, 0, 1) =

2. (1, 1, 1, 1) − (2, 1, 0, 1) =

3. (1, 2, 1, 0) · (2, 1, 2, 0) =

4. (1, 1, 2, 0) · (1, 1, 2, 0) =

Exercise 2.4 Let a be a vector in Zd3 other than (0, 0, . . . , 0). Consider the following sets:

H(a, 0) = {x ∈ Zd3 : a · x = 0}
H(a, 1) = {x ∈ Zd3 : a · x = 1}
H(a, 2) = {x ∈ Zd3 : a · x = 2}.

• Compute H(a, 0), H(a, 1), and H(a, 2) for a = (1, 2) ∈ Z23 .

• Compute H(b, 0) for b = (1, 2, 1) ∈ Z33 .

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Exercise 2.5 Use the notation H(a, i) from the previous problem.

1. Show that H(a, i) = H(2a, 2 ⊗ i) for any nonzero a ∈ Zd3 .

2. Show that H(a, 0) ∪ H(a, 1) ∪ H(a, 2) = Zd3 .

3. Show that |H(a, 0)| = |H(a, 1)| = |H(a, 2)|.

d−1
Exercise 2.6 Fix two points x and y in Zd3 . Show that there are 3 2 −1 distinct sets
H(a, i) are there that contain both x and y. (Keep Exercise 2.5.1 in mind! As before, a
must be nonzero).

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3 I thought we were learning about SET...
Using Exercise 1.5 as motivation, we associate each SET card to a vector (s, c, n, f ) ∈ Z43 ,
where

0 if the shape is an oval

s = 1 if the shape is a squiggle

2 if the shape is a diamond


0 if the color is red

c = 1 if the color is green

2 if the color is purple


0 if there are 3 shapes

n = 1 if there is 1 shape

2 if there are 2 shapes


0 if the filling is empty

f = 1 if the filling is striped

2 if the filling is solid


Exercise 3.1 Under the correspondence of SET cards to points in Z43 , when do three
points x = (x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 ), y = (y1 , y2 , y3 , y4 ), z = (z1 , z2 , z3 , z4 ) correspond to a set?

Exercise 3.2 Let’s say that three points x, y, z form a line if their corresponding SET
cards form a set. What does Exercise 1.1 say in this new language?

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Exercise 3.3 Let’s restrict our attention to the nine cards in the SET deck that are red
ovals. We can associate each of these cards to a point in Z23 . Draw all possible lines
among these nine points.

Exercise 3.4 What is the maximal number of cards you can choose from the red ovals
with the property that no three of them form a set? Justify your answer.

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 Let’s expand our attention to all 27 red cards now. We can associate each card to a
point in Z33 .

Exercise 3.5 What is the maximal number of red cards that can be chosen with the
property that no three of them form a set?

Exercise 3.6 (Hard!) Show that (i) there exists a collection of 20 cards in the SET deck
with the property that no three of them form a set, and (ii) among any 21 cards in the
SET deck, there must be a set.

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