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Concept
Cardinality
Summary
In mathematics, the cardinality of a set is a measure of the number of elements of the set. For example, the set contains 3 elements, and therefore has a cardinality of 3. Beginning in the late 19th century, this concept was generalized to infinite sets, which allows one to distinguish between different types of infinity, and to perform arithmetic on them. There are two approaches to cardinality: one which compares sets directly using bijections and injections, and another which uses cardinal numbers.
The cardinality of a set is also called its size, when no confusion with other notions of size is possible.
The cardinality of a set is usually denoted , with a vertical bar on each side; this is the same notation as absolute value, and the meaning depends on context. The cardinality of a set may alternatively be denoted by , , , or .
A crude sense of cardinality, an awareness that groups of things or events compare with other groups by containing more, fewer, or the same number of instances, is observed in a variety of present-day animal species, suggesting an origin millions of years ago. Human expression of cardinality is seen as early as 40000 years ago, with equating the size of a group with a group of recorded notches, or a representative collection of other things, such as sticks and shells. The abstraction of cardinality as a number is evident by 3000 BCE, in Sumerian mathematics and the manipulation of numbers without reference to a specific group of things or events.
From the 6th century BCE, the writings of Greek philosophers show the first hints of the cardinality of infinite sets. While they considered the notion of infinity as an endless series of actions, such as adding 1 to a number repeatedly, they did not consider the size of an infinite set of numbers to be a thing. The ancient Greek notion of infinity also considered the division of things into parts repeated without limit.
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