Cantor's first set theory articleCantor's first set theory article contains Georg Cantor's first theorems of transfinite set theory, which studies infinite sets and their properties. One of these theorems is his "revolutionary discovery" that the set of all real numbers is uncountably, rather than countably, infinite. This theorem is proved using Cantor's first uncountability proof, which differs from the more familiar proof using his diagonal argument.
First uncountable ordinalIn mathematics, the first uncountable ordinal, traditionally denoted by or sometimes by , is the smallest ordinal number that, considered as a set, is uncountable. It is the supremum (least upper bound) of all countable ordinals. When considered as a set, the elements of are the countable ordinals (including finite ordinals), of which there are uncountably many. Like any ordinal number (in von Neumann's approach), is a well-ordered set, with set membership serving as the order relation. is a limit ordinal, i.
Halting problemIn computability theory, the halting problem is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running, or continue to run forever. The halting problem is undecidable, meaning that no general algorithm exists that solves the halting problem for all possible program–input pairs. A key part of the formal statement of the problem is a mathematical definition of a computer and program, usually via a Turing machine.
CountingCounting is the process of determining the number of elements of a finite set of objects; that is, determining the size of a set. The traditional way of counting consists of continually increasing a (mental or spoken) counter by a unit for every element of the set, in some order, while marking (or displacing) those elements to avoid visiting the same element more than once, until no unmarked elements are left; if the counter was set to one after the first object, the value after visiting the final object gives the desired number of elements.
Enumerative combinatoricsEnumerative combinatorics is an area of combinatorics that deals with the number of ways that certain patterns can be formed. Two examples of this type of problem are counting combinations and counting permutations. More generally, given an infinite collection of finite sets Si indexed by the natural numbers, enumerative combinatorics seeks to describe a counting function which counts the number of objects in Sn for each n.
Computable functionComputable functions are the basic objects of study in computability theory. Computable functions are the formalized analogue of the intuitive notion of algorithms, in the sense that a function is computable if there exists an algorithm that can do the job of the function, i.e. given an input of the function domain it can return the corresponding output. Computable functions are used to discuss computability without referring to any concrete model of computation such as Turing machines or register machines.
Computably enumerable setIn computability theory, a set S of natural numbers is called computably enumerable (c.e.), recursively enumerable (r.e.), semidecidable, partially decidable, listable, provable or Turing-recognizable if: There is an algorithm such that the set of input numbers for which the algorithm halts is exactly S. Or, equivalently, There is an algorithm that enumerates the members of S. That means that its output is simply a list of all the members of S: s1, s2, s3, ... . If S is infinite, this algorithm will run forever.
