The symbol is usually used in mathematics as a part of other symbols, as an indication of something that may be arbitrarily large. For example, the customary interval notation refers to the set of all real numbers greater than or equal to the number a. That is, is the set of numbers starting at a, and moving arbitrarily far to the right. Although we read the symbol "" by saying "infinity," we must be careful not to think of as a number.
Countably Infinite Sets
On the other hand, mathematicians frequently use the word "infinite" as an adjective, when describing the size, or "cardinality," of a set. Two sets A and B are said to have the same cardinality if there is a one-to-one correspondence between them. For example, the sets and have the same cardinality, since there is a very obvious one-to-one correspondence between them. A set A is called countably infinite if it has the same cardinality as the set of positive integers, . That is, a set is countably infinite if it is possible to devise a systematic way of pointing to each of its elements in turn, and counting them: one, two, three, ... .
It is rather surprising that this can be done with the set of all rational numbers! Even though it appears that there are many more rational numbers than positive integers, it is nonetheless possible to devise a one-to-one correspondence between them. For simplicity, let's first consider the problem of devising a one-to-one correspondence between and , the set of positive rationals. (After we have done this, see if you can use this to devise a one-to-one correspondence between and .) Since our goal is effectively to count the positive rationals, let's make a systematic list of all them. Recalling that a positive rational number can be expressed as a quotient of two positive integers, consider this listing:
What's Larger than Countably Infinite?
We have just seen that both and are countably infinite. Is it true that every infinite set is countably infinite? That is, can every infinite set be put into one-to-one correspondence with , or are some infinite sets "larger" than in some sense? It turns out that there are indeed different "sizes" of infinite sets; not all infinite sets are of the same infinite "size"! An infinite set which cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence with is, naturally enough, referred to as an uncountable set. A simple example of an uncountable set is the set of real numbers between 0 and 1, the unit interval . To see that is uncountable, we will use the technique of proof by contradiction, which was used in Vignette 2 to show the existence of infinitely many primes.
It is clear that is infinite, so let's suppose that were a countably infinite set. (If we show that this leads to a contradiction, then we will have proven that is uncountable.) Now the numbers in can all be expressed in decimal form, beginning with the whole number part 0. (Even the number 1 can be written this way, as .) If the set of such numbers were countable, then we could list them in order of their correspondence with the positive integers:
Is There More?
The branch of mathematics that deals with sets and their cardinality is known as set theory. Although Georg Cantor's discovery of the differences among the cardinalities of various infinite sets came as quite a shock to the mathematical community in the 1870's, it is now well understood that there is a whole new type of arithmetic based on the transfinite numbers, the cardinalities of infinite sets.
Further Exploration