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When things are similar but aren’t equal

Or when we need to order things, relations are a flexible mathematical notion that allows us to compare terms or elements.

The most familiar relation is equality. But you have encountered many others at this point:

  • $ \to $ - implication of propositions
  • $ \leq $ - less than (or equality) of numbers
  • $ \subseteq $ - subset containment
  • $\mid$ - divisibility

Relations unify all these concepts. We will discuss the general concept and then branch off to investigate different common properties of relations.


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