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Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science Lecture Outline

This document outlines properties of relations, including reflexive, irreflexive, symmetric, antisymmetric, and transitive. It provides examples of relations and identifies their properties. The relations examined include equality, sibling, less than or equal to, less than, divides, subset, and a proximity relation. The document demonstrates that a relation can have multiple properties and how different relations exemplify different combinations of properties.

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Chenyang Fang
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27 views

Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science Lecture Outline

This document outlines properties of relations, including reflexive, irreflexive, symmetric, antisymmetric, and transitive. It provides examples of relations and identifies their properties. The relations examined include equality, sibling, less than or equal to, less than, divides, subset, and a proximity relation. The document demonstrates that a relation can have multiple properties and how different relations exemplify different combinations of properties.

Uploaded by

Chenyang Fang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science

Lecture Outline
November 27, 2018

Properties of Relations
Let R be a relation defined on set A. We say that R is

• reflexive, if for all x ∈ A, (x, x) ∈ R.

• irreflexive, if for all x ∈ A, (x, x) 6∈ R.

• symmetric, if for all x, y ∈ A, (x, y) ∈ R =⇒ (y, x) ∈ R.

• antisymmetric, if for all x, y ∈ A, x R y and y R x =⇒ x = y.

• transitive, if for all x, y, z ∈ A, x R y and y R z =⇒ x R z.

Note that the terms symmetric and antisymmetric are not opposites. A relation may be
both symmetric and antisymmetric or can neither be symmetric nor be antisymmetric.

Example. What are the properties of the following relations?

R1 : equality relation on Z.
R2 : “is a sibling of” relation on the set of all people.
R3 : “ ≤ ” relation on Z.
R4 : “ < ” relation on Z.
R5 : “|” relation on Z+ .
R6 : “|” relation on Z.
R7 : “ ⊆ ” relation on the power set of a set S.
R8 : {(x, y) ∈ R2 : |x − y| < }, where  = 0.001

Solution.

Reflexive : R1 , R3 , R5 , R7 , R8
Irreflexive : R2 , R4
Symmetric : R1 , R2 , R8
Antisymmetric : R1 , R3 , R4 , R5 , R7
Transitive : R1 , R3 , R4 , R5 , R6 , R7

Note that R6 is not reflexive because (0, 0) 6∈ R6 ; it is not antisymmetric because for any
integer a, a| − a and −a|a, but a 6= −a. R2 is not transitive because x and z could be the
same person. Observe that R6 is an example of a relation that is neither symmetric nor
antisymmetric. R1 is an example of a relation that is symmetric and antisymmetric.

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