0580
Set Notation and Venn Diagrams
Number
Describing a set
- Any well-defined group of things forms a set, and each thing belonging to it is an element of that set
- Elements can be anything: numbers, letters, or coordinate pairs
- Writing the elements inside curly brackets defines a set directly
- The factors of 12 form the set {1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12}
- A rule can replace the list, written with a colon read as "such that"
- {x : x is an integer, 1 ⩽ x ⩽ 5} is another way of writing {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
- {(x, y) : y = mx + c} is the set of points lying on that line
- Capital letters name sets and lower-case letters name elements
The universal set
- The universal set holds everything under consideration in that question, and this specification writes it as ℰ, a script capital E
- Every other set in the question is contained within it
- Other material uses the Greek letter xi, ξ, or the letter U for the same thing, and the diagram below is labelled that way, but ℰ is the symbol the syllabus lists and the one printed on these papers