Bijection between natural numbers and positive even numbers

  • Context: Graduate 
  • Thread starter Thread starter srfriggen
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Cardinality
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
1 reply · 3K views
srfriggen
Messages
304
Reaction score
7
correct me if I'm wrong, but the set of Natural numbers and the set of all positive even numbers have the same number of elements, the same cardinality, right?

So there would have to be a bijective function between the two, correct?

If we go from f:N->N then the function is not surjective, since all the odd numbers are being left out.

So would the correct function be, f:N-> N - {n,x in N l n=2x-1} (the latter set being the natural numbers minus the odd numbers)
 
Physics news on Phys.org
srfriggen said:
correct me if I'm wrong, but the set of Natural numbers and the set of all positive even numbers have the same number of elements, the same cardinality, right?

So there would have to be a bijective function between the two, correct?

I believe that is correct. It would be true even if you took the set of every 10th natural number since the set of every nth natural number has the same cardinality as the set of all natural numbers.