Subsets, Proper Subset, Improper Subset, Intervals - Practice Questions & MCQ

Set

A set is a well-defined collection of distinct objects and it is usually denoted by capital letters A, B, C, S, U, V…...

Example: A = {1,2,3}

All the objects that form a set are called its elements or members. These are usually denoted by small letters, i.e. x, y, z …..

If x is an element of a set A, we write x ∈ A and read as ‘x belongs to A'.

If x is not an element of a set A, we write x ∉ A and read as ‘x does not belong to A'.

Example: A={1,2,3}, then 2 ∈ A (2 belongs to set A) and 4 ∉ A (4 does not belong to set A)

There are two methods of representing a set - Roster (or Tabular) form & Set-builder Form.

Roster or Tabular form

In roster form, all the elements of a set are listed, the elements are separated by commas and are enclosed within braces { }. 

Example: {a, e, i, o, u} represents the set of all the vowels in English alphabet in the roster from.

In roster form, the order in which the elements are listed is immaterial, i.e. the set of all natural numbers which divide 14 is {1, 2, 7, 14} can also be represented as {1, 14, 7, 2}.

An element is not generally repeated in roster form of set, i.e., all the elements are taken as distinct. For example, the set of letters forming the word ‘SCHOOL’ is { S, C, H, O, L} or {H, O, L, C, S}. Here, the order of listing elements has no relevance.

Set-builder Form

In set-builder form, all the elements of a set possess a single common property which is not possessed by any element outside the set. If Z contains all values of x for which the condition q(x) is true, then we write

Z = { x : q(x) } or Z = { x | q(x) }

Where, ' : ' or ' | ' is read as 'such that'

eg. The set A = { 0, 1, 8, 27, 64, .... } can be written in Set Builder form as 

A = { is a non negative integer}