TABLE OF CONTENTS BY
C. EDWARD SANDIFER Professor, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT.
GEORGE J. MOSHOS Professor Emeritus of Computer and Information Science, New Jersey Institute of Technology
by C. Edward Sandifer
REFERENCES: Conte and DeBoor, Elementary Numerical Analysis: An Algorithmic Approach, McGraw-Hill. Boyce and DiPrima, Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems, Wiley. Hamming, Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers, McGraw-Hill. Kreyszig, Advanced Engineering Mathematics, Wiley.
The concept of a set appears throughout modern mathematics. A set is a well-defined list or collection of objects and is generally denoted by capital letters, A, B, C, . The objects composing the set are called elements and are denoted by lowercase letters, a, b, x, y, . The notation
is read x is an element of A and means that x is one of the objects composing the set A.
There are two basic ways to describe a set. The first way is to list the elements of the set.
This often is not practical for very large sets.
The second way is to describe properties which determine the elements of the set.
This method is sometimes awkward since a single set may sometimes be described in several different ways.
In describing sets, the symbol : is read such that. The expression
is read B equals the set of all x such that x is an even...
