This document defines and explains various types of sets. A set is a collection of distinct objects called elements or members. Sets can be defined by listing elements between curly braces or using a property that defines the elements. Special sets include natural numbers, integers, rational numbers, and real numbers. Types of sets include subsets, equal sets, empty sets, singleton sets, finite sets, and infinite sets. The cardinal number of a set is the number of distinct elements. Disjoint sets do not have any elements in common, while the universal set contains all elements of other given sets.

1. Chapter-1
SETS
By. Selva Poorani J

3. • A set is a well defined collection of objects, called
the “elements” or “members” of the set.
• A specific set can be defined in two ways-
1. If there are only a few elements, they can be listed
individually, by writing them between curly braces ‘{ }’ and
placing commas in between. E.g.- {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
2. The second way of writing set is to use a property that defines
elements of the set.
e.g.- {x | x is odd and 0 < x < 100}
• If x is an element o set A, it can be written as ‘x  A’
• If x is not an element of A, it can be written as ‘x  A’

5. SPECIAL SETS
•Standard notations used to define
some sets:
a. N- set of all natural numbers
b. Z- set of all integers
c. Q- set of all rational numbers
d. R- set of all real numbers
e. C- set of all complex numbers

6. • SETS
• TYPES OF SETS

7. TYPES OF SETS
SUBSET
• If every element of a set A is also an element of
set B, we say set A is a subset of set B.
A  B
Example-
If A={1,2,3,4,5,6} and B={1,2,3,4}
Then B  A

8. EQUAL SETS
Two sets A and B are called equal if they have equal
numbers and similar types of
elements.
i.e. A  B and B  A . This implies, A=B
For e.g. If A={1, 3, 4, 5, 6}
B={4, 1,5, 6, 3} then both Set A and B are equal.

9. EMPTY SETS
• A set which does not contain any elements is called as Empty set or Null or Void
set. Denoted by 
or { }
• example: (a) The set of whole numbers less than 0.
(b) Clearly there is no whole number less than 0. Therefore, it is an empty
set.
(c) N = {x : x ∈ N, 3 < x < 4}
• Let A = {x : 2 < x < 3, x is a natural number}
Here A is an empty set because there is no natural number between 2 and 3.
• Let B = {x : x is a composite number less than 4}.
Here B is an empty set because there is no composite number less than 4.

10. SINGLETON SET
• A singleton set is a set containing exactly one element.
• Example: Let B = {x : x is a even prime number}
Here B is a singleton set because there is only one prime number which
is even, i.e., 2.
• A = {x : x is neither prime nor composite}
It is a singleton set containing one element, i.e., 1.

11. FINITE SET
• A set which contains a definite number of elements is called a finite
set. Empty set is also
called a finite set.
For example:
• The set of all colors in the rainbow.
• N = {x : x ∈ N, x < 7}
• P = {2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, ...... 97}

12. INFINITE SET
• The set whose elements cannot be listed, i.e., set containing never-ending
elements is called an infinite set.
For example:
• Set of all points in a plane A = {x : x ∈ N, x > 1}
• Set of all prime numbers B = {x : x ∈ W, x = 2n}
Note:
• All infinite sets cannot be expressed in roster form.

13. CARDINAL NUMBER OF A SET
• The number of distinct elements in a given set A
is called the cardinal number of A. It is denoted by
n(A).
• For example:
A {x : x ∈ N, x < 5}
A = {1, 2, 3, 4}
Therefore, n(A) = 4
B = set of letters in the word ALGEBRA
B = {A, L, G, E, B, R} Therefore, n(B) = 6

14. DISJOINT SETS
• Two sets A and B are said to be disjoint, if
they do not have any element in common.
• For example:
A = {x : x is a prime number}
B = {x : x is a composite number}.
Clearly, A and B do not have any element in
common and are disjoint sets

15. UNIVERSAL SET
• A set which contains all the elements of other given sets is
called a universal set. The symbol
for denoting a universal set is ∪ or ξ.
• For example;
1. If A = {1, 2, 3} B = {2, 3, 4} C = {3, 5, 7}
then U = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7}
[Here A ⊆ U, B ⊆ U, C ⊆ U and U ⊇ A, U ⊇ B, U ⊇ C]
2. If P is a set of all whole numbers and Q is a set of all negative
numbers then the universal set
is a set of all integers.
3. If A = {a, b, c} B = {d, e} C = {f, g, h, i}
then U = {a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i} can be taken as universal set