Monday, March 30, 2015

Forbidden subfamilies

Given a set theory we can classify families of sets based upon forbidden subfamilies. As with most classes determined by forbidden substructures the classification of families based upon forbidden subfamilies is characterized based upon the size of the largest forbidden subfamily. If the largest forbidden subfamily is of size one then the class is going to be a power set of some family often determined by cardinality. If the largest forbidden subfamily is of size two then the class is going to be a clique family because it is generated by the dependencies between pairs of elements. Another issue is the smallest forbidden subfamily. All families with size greater then the forbidden size will be accepted automatically. The two issues of the largest and smallest size of a forbidden substructure help to determine nature of subclass closed families.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Algebraic set theory

The theory of sets can be described by a boolean algebra equipped with a singleton function which converts between any atom in the boolean algebra into its corresponding member value. Sets can then be described within this algebraic structure entirely in terms of the join operation of the boolean algebra and the singleton function. This allows us to describe sets entirely in terms of algebraic set theory.

The only element in a boolean algebra which does not contain any atoms is the lower bound element of the boolean algebra. By using this lower bound element, the join operation of the boolean algebra, and the singleton function we can produce elements of the pure elements of the algebra. These pure elements correspond to the pure sets which we generally encounter in set theory. Some algebras of sets are limited to only pure elements and others are not.