Encyclopedia > Uncountable

  Article Content

Uncountable

In mathematics, a set which is not countable is called uncountable. All uncountable sets are infinite.

The best known example of an uncountable set is the set R of all real numbers; Cantor's diagonal argument shows that this set is uncountable. A modification of this argument can be used to show that several other sets are uncountable as well, for instance the set of all sequences of natural numbers (and even the set of all sequences consisting only of zeros and ones) and the set of all subsets of natural numbers.

Not all uncountable sets have the same size; the sizes of infinite sets are analyzed with the theory of cardinal numbers. The statement that R is the smallest uncountable set (in the sense that its cardinal number is the smallest uncountable cardinal number) is the continuum hypothesis; this hypothesis is undecidable from the ordinary axioms of set theory.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Lake Ronkonkoma, New York

... under the age of 18, 7.4% from 18 to 24, 32.6% from 25 to 44, 23.2% from 45 to 64, and 12.2% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 37 years. For every 100 ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 47 ms