Cartesian product
The Cartesian product of two sets and
is the set of all ordered pairs
such that
is an element of
and
is an element of
. More generally, the Cartesian product of an ordered family of sets
is the set
of ordered tuples
such that
is an element of
, for any positive integer
for which we have specified a set
.
Existence
Ordered Pairs
In the language of set theory, it is not trivial to define an ordered pair since the set and
are equivalent. Thus, the definition of an ordered pair
is the set
Through this definition, the pair
does not equal the pair
since the set
and
are not equivalent. However, for the ordered pair
the resulting set reduces to
(do you see why?). Thus reversing the positions of
in the ordered pair does not change the resulting set.
See Also
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