The Cartiesian Product

From Department of Mathematics at UTSA
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Cartesian product of the sets and

The Cartesian product of two sets A and B, denoted A×B, is the set of all ordered pairs (a, b) where a is in A and b is in B. In terms of set-builder notation, that is

A table can be created by taking the Cartesian product of a set of rows and a set of columns. If the Cartesian product rows × columns is taken, the cells of the table contain ordered pairs of the form (row value, column value).

One can similarly define the Cartesian product of n sets, also known as an n-fold Cartesian product, which can be represented by an n-dimensional array, where each element is an n-tuple. An ordered pair is a 2-tuple or couple. More generally still, one can define the Cartesian product of an indexed family of sets.

The Cartesian product is named after René Descartes, whose formulation of analytic geometry gave rise to the concept, which is further generalized in terms of direct product.

Most common implementation (set theory)

A formal definition of the Cartesian product from set-theoretical principles follows from a definition of ordered pair. The most common definition of ordered pairs, Kuratowski's definition, is . Under this definition, is an element of , and is a subset of that set, where represents the power set operator. Therefore, the existence of the Cartesian product of any two sets in ZFC follows from the axioms of pairing, union, power set, and specification. Since functions are usually defined as a special case of relations, and relations are usually defined as subsets of the Cartesian product, the definition of the two-set Cartesian product is necessarily prior to most other definitions.

Non-commutativity and non-associativity

Let A, B, C, and D be sets.

The Cartesian product A × B is not commutative,

because the ordered pairs are reversed unless at least one of the following conditions is satisfied:

  • A is equal to B, or
  • A or B is the empty set.

For example:

A = {1,2}; B = {3,4}
A × B = {1,2} × {3,4} = {(1,3), (1,4), (2,3), (2,4)}
B × A = {3,4} × {1,2} = {(3,1), (3,2), (4,1), (4,2)}
A = B = {1,2}
A × B = B × A = {1,2} × {1,2} = {(1,1), (1,2), (2,1), (2,2)}
A = {1,2}; B = ∅
A × B = {1,2} × ∅ = ∅
B × A = ∅ × {1,2} = ∅

Strictly speaking, the Cartesian product is not associative (unless one of the involved sets is empty).

If for example A = {1}, then (A × A) × A = {((1, 1), 1)} ≠ {(1, (1, 1))} = A × (A × A).

Cardinality

The cardinality of a set is the number of elements of the set. For example, defining two sets: A = {a, b} and B = {5, 6}. Both set A and set B consist of two elements each. Their Cartesian product, written as A × B, results in a new set which has the following elements:

A × B = {(a,5), (a,6), (b,5), (b,6)}.

where each element of A is paired with each element of B, and where each pair makes up one element of the output set. The number of values in each element of the resulting set is equal to the number of sets whose Cartesian product is being taken; 2 in this case. The cardinality of the output set is equal to the product of the cardinalities of all the input sets. That is,

|A × B| = |A| · |B|.

In this case, |A × B| = 4

Similarly

|A × B × C| = |A| · |B| · |C|

and so on.

The set A × B is infinite if either A or B is infinite, and the other set is not the empty set.

Cartesian products of several sets

n-ary Cartesian product

The Cartesian product can be generalized to the n-ary Cartesian product over n sets X1, ..., Xn as the set

of n-tuples. If tuples are defined as nested ordered pairs, it can be identified with (X1 × ⋯ × Xn−1) × Xn. If a tuple is defined as a function on {1, 2, …, n} that takes its value at i to be the ith element of the tuple, then the Cartesian product X1×⋯×Xn is the set of functions

n-ary Cartesian power

The Cartesian square of a set X is the Cartesian product X2 = X × X. An example is the 2-dimensional plane R2 = R × R where R is the set of real numbers: R2 is the set of all points (x,y) where x and y are real numbers.

The n-ary Cartesian power of a set X, denoted , can be defined as

An example of this is R3 = R × R × R, with R again the set of real numbers, and more generally Rn.

The n-ary Cartesian power of a set X is isomorphic to the space of functions from an n-element set to X. As a special case, the 0-ary Cartesian power of X may be taken to be a singleton set, corresponding to the empty function with codomain X.

Infinite Cartesian products

It is possible to define the Cartesian product of an arbitrary (possibly infinite) indexed family of sets. If I is any index set, and is a family of sets indexed by I, then the Cartesian product of the sets in is defined to be

that is, the set of all functions defined on the index set such that the value of the function at a particular index i is an element of Xi. Even if each of the Xi is nonempty, the Cartesian product may be empty if the axiom of choice, which is equivalent to the statement that every such product is nonempty, is not assumed.

For each j in I, the function

defined by is called the jth projection map.

Cartesian power is a Cartesian product where all the factors Xi are the same set X. In this case,

is the set of all functions from I to X, and is frequently denoted XI. This case is important in the study of cardinal exponentiation. An important special case is when the index set is , the natural numbers: this Cartesian product is the set of all infinite sequences with the ith term in its corresponding set Xi. For example, each element of

can be visualized as a vector with countably infinite real number components. This set is frequently denoted , or .

Other forms

Abbreviated form

If several sets are being multiplied together (e.g., X1, X2, X3, …), then some authors choose to abbreviate the Cartesian product as simply ×Xi.

Cartesian product of functions

If f is a function from A to B and g is a function from X to Y, then their Cartesian product f × g is a function from A × X to B × Y with

This can be extended to tuples and infinite collections of functions. This is different from the standard Cartesian product of functions considered as sets.

Cylinder

Let be a set and . Then the cylinder of with respect to is the Cartesian product of and .

Normally, is considered to be the universe of the context and is left away. For example, if is a subset of the natural numbers , then the cylinder of is .

Licensing

Content obtained and/or adapted from: