Set product

https://arbital.com/p/set_product

by Patrick Stevens Aug 25 2016 updated Aug 26 2016

A fundamental way of combining sets is to take their product, making a set that contains all tuples of elements from the originals.


[summary: The product of two sets and is just the collection of ordered pairs where is in and is in . The reason we call it the "product" can be seen if you consider the set-product of and : it consists of ordered pairs where and , but if we interpret these as integer coordinates in the plane, we obtain just an rectangle.]

[summary(Technical): The product of sets indexed by the set is denoted , and it consists of all -length ordered tuples of elements. For example, if , and , then If and , then $$\prod{x \in X} Yx = {(\dots, -2, -1, 1, 0, 1, 2, \dots)}]

[todo: define the product as tuples]

[todo: several examples, including R^n being the product over ; this introduces associativity of the product which is covered later]

[todo: product is associative up to isomorphism, though not literally]

[todo: cardinality of the product, noting that in the finite case it collapses to just the usual definition of the product of natural numbers]

[todo: as an aside, define the product formally in ZF]

[todo: link to universal property, mentioning it is a product in the category of sets]