The Joy of Sets : Fundamentals of Contemporary Set Theory

Professor Keith Devlin
Springer New York
 9780387940946
0-387-94094-4

This book provides an account of those parts of contemporary set theory of direct relevance to other areas of pure mathematics. The intended reader is either an advanced-level mathematics undergraduate,.

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a beginning graduate student in mathematics, or an accomplished mathematician who desires or needs some familiarity with modern set theory. The book is written in a fairly easy-going style, with minimal formalism. In Chapter 1, the basic principles of set theory are developed in a 'naive' manner. Here the notions of 'set', 'union', 'intersection', 'power set', 'rela- tion', 'function', etc., are defined and discussed. One assumption in writing Chapter 1 has been that, whereas the reader may have met all of these 1 concepts before and be familiar with their usage, she may not have con- sidered the various notions as forming part of the continuous development of a pure subject (namely, set theory). Consequently, the presentation is at the same time rigorous and fast.