MHB Does AxA Equal BxB Imply A Equals B?

Yankel
Messages
390
Reaction score
0
Dear all,

I am trying to prove a simple thing, that if AxA = BxB then A=B.

The intuition is clear to me. If a pair (x,y) belongs to AxA it means that x is in A and y is in A. If a pair (x,y) belongs to BxB it means that x is in B and y is in B. If the sets of all pairs are equal, it means that every x in A is also in B and vice versa.

How do I prove it formally ?

Thank you !
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Yankel said:
Dear all,

I am trying to prove a simple thing, that if AxA = BxB then A=B.

The intuition is clear to me. If a pair (x,y) belongs to AxA it means that x is in A and y is in A. If a pair (x,y) belongs to BxB it means that x is in B and y is in B. If the sets of all pairs are equal, it means that every x in A is also in B and vice versa.

How do I prove it formally ?

Thank you !
This may not be as simple as you think. To start with, what do you mean by saying that two sets are equal? I think that the only way to make sense of that is to interpret "A=B" to mean that A and B have the same cardinality.

If a set $A$ is finite then its cardinality is just the number of elements it contains, denoted by $|A|$. If $|A| = m$ then $|A\times A| = m^2.$ So if $|B| = n$ and $|A\times A| = |B\times B|$ then $m^2 = n^2$, from which it follows that $m=n$. This proves that if "$A\times A = B\times B$" then "$A=B$" in the case of finite sets.

For infinite sets the situation is more complicated. There is a theorem of Zermelo that if $A$ is an infinite set then $|A\times A| = |A|$. From that it follows immediately that if $|A\times A| = |B\times B|$ then $|A| = |B|$. However, the proof of Zermelo's theorem requires the Axiom of Choice. In models of set theory that do not satisfy this axiom, it may be that your result does not hold.
 
Opalg said "
I think that the only way to make sense of that is to interpret "A=B" to mean that A and B have the same
cardinality
."

I disagree. To say that sets A and B are equal means "x\in A if and only if x\in B". If two sets are equal they have the same cardinality but the converse is not true. The sets A= {1, 2, 3} and B= {a, b, c} have the same cardinality but are not equal.
 
HallsofIvy said:
Opalg said "
I think that the only way to make sense of that is to interpret "A=B" to mean that A and B have the same

cardinality
."

I disagree. To say that sets A and B are equal means "x\in A if and only if x\in B". If two sets are equal they have the same cardinality but the converse is not true. The sets A= {1, 2, 3} and B= {a, b, c} have the same cardinality but are not equal.


In that case, the result becomes trivially true. If $A\times A$ and $B\times B$ are just two different names for the same set, then the diagonal elements of $A\times A$ (those of the form $(a,a):a\in A$) are duplicates of the elements of $A$. The same holds for the diagonal elements of $B\times B$. If those diagonals are the same, it follows that the elements of $A$ are the same as the elements of $B$, so $A=B$.
 
Yes, it is. Saying that "A= B", where A and B are sets, means that if x is in A then it is also in B and if y is in B then it is also in A.

If x is a member of A. then (x, x) is in AxA= BxB so x is in B. If y is a member of B then (y, y) is in BxB= AxA so y is in A. Therefore A= B.

It is trivial but that is the question asked.
 
Yankel said:
I am trying to prove a simple thing, that if AxA = BxB then A=B.

The intuition is clear to me. If a pair (x,y) belongs to AxA it means that x is in A and y is in A. If a pair (x,y) belongs to BxB it means that x is in B and y is in B. If the sets of all pairs are equal, it means that every x in A is also in B and vice versa.

How do I prove it formally ?

Thank you !
Let $a\in A$. Then $(a,a)\in A\times A$. Since we’re assuming $A\times A=B\times B$, this means $(a,a)\in B\times B$ and thus $a\in B$. Therefore $A\subseteq B$. The same argument with $A$ and $B$ interchanged shows that $B\subseteq A$. Hence $A=B$.
 
Hi all, I've been a roulette player for more than 10 years (although I took time off here and there) and it's only now that I'm trying to understand the physics of the game. Basically my strategy in roulette is to divide the wheel roughly into two halves (let's call them A and B). My theory is that in roulette there will invariably be variance. In other words, if A comes up 5 times in a row, B will be due to come up soon. However I have been proven wrong many times, and I have seen some...
Namaste & G'day Postulate: A strongly-knit team wins on average over a less knit one Fundamentals: - Two teams face off with 4 players each - A polo team consists of players that each have assigned to them a measure of their ability (called a "Handicap" - 10 is highest, -2 lowest) I attempted to measure close-knitness of a team in terms of standard deviation (SD) of handicaps of the players. Failure: It turns out that, more often than, a team with a higher SD wins. In my language, that...

Similar threads

Replies
2
Views
2K
Replies
5
Views
2K
Replies
11
Views
4K
Replies
2
Views
2K
Replies
2
Views
2K
Replies
4
Views
2K
Replies
5
Views
2K
Back
Top